Japan
Corrections in Japan
Penal institutions — prisons, juvenile prisons and detention houses — are run nationally by the Ministry of Justice’s Correction Bureau and its eight regional correction headquarters.
Facts on this page were checked against their sources on .
Corrections in Japan are administered nationally. In Japanese usage prisons, juvenile prisons and detention houses are together called "penal institutions", and the Ministry of Justice states that these penal institutions are under its jurisdiction and are supervised by one of its internal departments, the Correction Bureau, together with the eight regional correction headquarters that serve as its field offices.
The same idea, explained generally
- What is justice?
Justice is the principle that people should be treated according to rules that apply equally to everyone, decided by bodies that are authorised, constrained, and answerable. This guide explains what that means institutionally.
- Why do justice systems need oversight?
Justice institutions hold coercive powers, often operate out of public view, and make decisions that are hard to reverse. This guide explains the oversight mechanisms built to detect and correct errors, and their limits.
Sources
Sources
Penal Institutions (Prisons / Juvenile Prisons / Detention Houses)
Ministry of Justice of Japan, Correction Bureau (moj.go.jp) · Government publication · link verified 2026-07-25
The Ministry of Justice Correction Bureau's own English page, read directly. Supports: that 'in Japan, prisons, juvenile prisons and detention houses are collectively referred to as "penal institutions"'; and that 'these penal institutions are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice and are under the supervision of one of its internal departments, the Correction Bureau, and the eight regional correction headquarters which are the field offices'. Supports the NATIONAL administration of corrections by the Ministry of Justice — the structural point for the corrections page. It supports no figure about prison population, capacity or density; the pilot does not publish a Japanese detention-capacity statistic (see the model-findings document for why that claim was deferred).