Some Japanese prisons have become de facto welfare facilities for the mentally disabled

Asahi’s English edition has an editorial today by Joji Yamamoto, a former Lower House member who has worked with and written books about inmates with mental or intellectual disabilities. Yamamoto believes that many mentally disabled people “slip through the welfare safety net” and end up under the care of the prison system:

Surveys in recent years show that the trend is common to prisons across Japan. In particular, the ratio of inmates with disabilities is high at prisons that accommodate repeat offenders serving a second or subsequent term. At a prison for repeat offenders I recently visited, about 60 percent of all inmates had some form of disability.

Before they were arrested, many of them had been neglected by welfare officials. Some had been forced to live almost like homeless people before committing such minor offenses as skipping out on a restaurant bill or stealing a handbag to be sent to prison.

Yamamoto calls on the Justice ministry and the Welfare ministry to work together and develop a means of helping repeat offenders with mental disabilities get out of prison and into better care facilities.