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最終更新日：2026年10月16日
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最終更新日：2026年10月16日
授業計画や教室は変更となる可能性があるため、必ずUTASで最新の情報を確認して下さい。
UTASにアクセスできない方は、担当教員または部局教務へお問い合わせ下さい。
Paragon or Pariah? Japan's Approach to Prison & Probation
Paragon or Pariah? Japan's Approach to Prison & Probation
Legal education tends to focus on particular aspects of criminal justice: how crime is defined at law and prosecuted in practice.
So when we study law, we take courses with titles like 'Criminal Law', 'Evidence' and 'Criminal Procedure'.
From the perspective of substantive law, students can be left with the impression that these offerings, which focus on the early stages of the 'penal chain', encapsulate the totality of how a legal system deals with deviance.
Yet there is more to the story...
Meanwhile, in Japan's case, we see a second kind of skewing.
Japan's criminal law settings and prosecutorial practices have long been subject to close international scrutiny.
This external gaze has had a tendency to stray into Orientalism.
Comparative commentary can exoticize Japan's approach in one of two ways: by placing it on an exalted pedestal or by excoriating it as barbaric.
This course aims to escape the limitations of both this narrow focus on the early stages of the penal chain and Orientalist comparative paradigms.
It starts by acknowledging that Japan's criminal justice regulation is distinctive among industrialized peers.
For example, it makes little use of international human rights discourse and relies far more heavily on volunteers.
Over the semester, the course asks students to think critically, examining not just 'law in books' but also 'law in action' and relying on available evidence, to come to their own conclusion as to whether Japan's approach to criminal justice is reprehensible or defensible.
In other words, the course asks whether Japan is a global pariah state or a paragon of virtue when it comes to punishing and reintegrating offenders.
We will tackle this question in light of both the historical arc of Japanese prisons and probation since the Meiji era and recent law reforms that have sought to:
- catapult the country forward, away from the 19th century industrial prison model in place for 115 years
- secure a stable volunteer workforce to sustain the probation system through rapid demographic change.
This deep dive will include two opportunities for experiential learning:
- a class visit to a large prison for adult male offenders in Fuchu in western Tokyo - including foreign male offenders;
- a class visit by a former Director-General of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Rehabilitation Bureau, who now serves as a Volunteer Probation Officer (VPO).
++++++++++++++++
This seminar will be conducted in spoken English and most of the readings provided will be in English.
Students should have strong English skills and be willing to engage actively in class discussion.
However, students are welcome to use AI translation tools during the semester to facilitate their own participation in the course.
For example, students might use these tools to:
- speed their reading comprehension;
- assist collaboration between class members with different linguistic background;
- access additional materials in other languages or share those materials with the class, or
- prepare slides for an oral presentation.
So when we study law, we take courses with titles like 'Criminal Law', 'Evidence' and 'Criminal Procedure'.
From the perspective of substantive law, students can be left with the impression that these offerings, which focus on the early stages of the 'penal chain', encapsulate the totality of how a legal system deals with deviance.
Yet there is more to the story...
Meanwhile, in Japan's case, we see a second kind of skewing.
Japan's criminal law settings and prosecutorial practices have long been subject to close international scrutiny.
This external gaze has had a tendency to stray into Orientalism.
Comparative commentary can exoticize Japan's approach in one of two ways: by placing it on an exalted pedestal or by excoriating it as barbaric.
This course aims to escape the limitations of both this narrow focus on the early stages of the penal chain and Orientalist comparative paradigms.
It starts by acknowledging that Japan's criminal justice regulation is distinctive among industrialized peers.
For example, it makes little use of international human rights discourse and relies far more heavily on volunteers.
Over the semester, the course asks students to think critically, examining not just 'law in books' but also 'law in action' and relying on available evidence, to come to their own conclusion as to whether Japan's approach to criminal justice is reprehensible or defensible.
In other words, the course asks whether Japan is a global pariah state or a paragon of virtue when it comes to punishing and reintegrating offenders.
We will tackle this question in light of both the historical arc of Japanese prisons and probation since the Meiji era and recent law reforms that have sought to:
- catapult the country forward, away from the 19th century industrial prison model in place for 115 years
- secure a stable volunteer workforce to sustain the probation system through rapid demographic change.
This deep dive will include two opportunities for experiential learning:
- a class visit to a large prison for adult male offenders in Fuchu in western Tokyo - including foreign male offenders;
- a class visit by a former Director-General of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Rehabilitation Bureau, who now serves as a Volunteer Probation Officer (VPO).
++++++++++++++++
This seminar will be conducted in spoken English and most of the readings provided will be in English.
Students should have strong English skills and be willing to engage actively in class discussion.
However, students are welcome to use AI translation tools during the semester to facilitate their own participation in the course.
For example, students might use these tools to:
- speed their reading comprehension;
- assist collaboration between class members with different linguistic background;
- access additional materials in other languages or share those materials with the class, or
- prepare slides for an oral presentation.
時間割／共通科目コード
コース名
教員
学期
時限
25-303-012
GLP-LP6202S3
Paragon or Pariah? Japan's Approach to Prison & Probation
LAWSON Carol
火曜3限
マイリストに追加
マイリストから削除
講義使用言語
英語
単位
2
実務経験のある教員による授業科目
NO
他学部履修
可
開講所属
法学政治学研究科
授業計画
This seminar adopts a comparative perspective to explore the internal logic of Japan's criminal justice system - in particular the stages after sentencing.
In the first session, the instructor will outline the seminar's aims and structure. The seminar then begins with an examination of the meaning and methods of comparative law. Next we broaden our gaze to explore the historical origins of Japan's modern system, particularly since the Meiji era and gain an overview of the system as an integrated whole. After these introductory sessions, the seminar shifts gears. We then begin a sustained student-led examination of the final stages in the 'penal chain': prison and probation* (*NOTE that in Japan, "probation" includes parole. In English, the collective term is "community corrections").
In terms of imprisonment, students will review papers on topics including incarceration rates - which reveal comparative restraint vs excess in the use of imprisonment; how prison conditions are calibrated to offenders and offenses and conceptualized as either 'retributive' or 'therapeutic' and how this affects matters like disciplinary practices, as well as the merits and drawbacks of prison privatization.
When we consider probation, students will evaluate Japan’s remarkable long-term reliance on unpaid citizen volunteers to deliver the vast bulk of its community corrections services. This raises questions about the approach taken elsewhere - where has been normative for paid, trained professionals to be charged with rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders. It also piques interest in the sustainability of heavy reliance on penal sector volunteers in a rapidly aging, shrinking society.
Overall, this course offers students the chance to interrogate Japan's distinctive - and often controversial - policies and practices through the lens of criminal justice processes that often receive less attention. This creates a further opportunity - to reexamine assumptions that underpin imprisonment and reintegration in other industrialized jurisdictions and think critically about how societies everywhere choose to deal with criminality and appraise each other's regulatory choices.
授業の方法
All classes will be interactive.
After our introductory sessions, the instructor will assign specific papers to students, either in groups or individually, depending on class size and composition.
Students will present on the papers to which they are assigned, adding comparative perspectives wherever possible.
These student presentations will be followed by class-wide discussions.
All students are expected to read the assigned materials each week, regardless of whether they are presenting.
- Our visit to Fuchu Prison will take place in the middle of the semester, replacing that week's class.
- Our visit from a former Director-General of the MoJ Rehabilitation Bureau, who is now a serving VPO, will be a regular class, in which our class-wide discussion will focus on interacting with our visitor.
成績評価方法
- 40% Active participation in class discussion
- 30% Presentation
- 30% Reflective report
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NOTES:
1) Students may submit their reflective report in Japanese or English
リフレクションレポートは日本語でも英語でもどちらでも可。
2) No written exam will be administered.
3) Grading will use the A・B・C・F scale.
履修上の注意
Anyone interested in comparative law in general, or criminal justice, punishment or reintegration specifically is welcome.
比較法、刑事政策、刑罰や社会復帰に関心のある方は歓迎。
