Nara Prison is a complex located in the city of Nara , in the west of the island of Honshu , the largest and main island of the Japanese archipelago. Construction began in 1901 and the works ended seven years later. Officially in 1909 the facilities began to function. Its structure is of red brick and Romanesque style ^{[ 1 ]} . Nara Prison is the only intact prison of the five that were built during the Meiji Government (1868-1912) that aimed to modernize the country's prison facilities after its international reopening.

It is the oldest in Japan and was declared a site of cultural interest. ^{[ 2 ]}

The facilities, which have an area of ​​about 106,000 square meters, were expanded in later years to their current state and in 1946 it began to be used as a juvenile prison, a function that it maintained until its closure in 2017, when the authorities began to look for operators to reinvent the complex.

Nara

Nara (奈良 市Nara-shi ^? ) Is the capital of Nara prefecture in the Kansai region, one of the most traditional in Japan , in the south of Honshū , the main island of Japan . It was the capital of the country in medieval Japan .

Draft

In January 2019, the project was assigned to Hoshino Resorts , the hotel chain that will carry out the work on this complex. The chosen model will be a luxury hotel that will make it possible to recover the costs of these reforms and also generate many new profits. Every effort will be made to maintain its most special characteristics as it is a representative and precious building. It will have a few dozen rooms and as regards the storage areas and rooms used by the guards, they will be converted into common rooms. The Japanese Ministry of Justice estimates that the original renovation project will cost more than 15 billion yen (120 million euros).

tourism

In 2017, the number of visitors who came to the city managed to increase by 4.96% year-on-year to exceed 16.3 million people, of which only 1.8 million stayed to stay there, according to figures provided by the section Nara City Council Cultural. Japan seeks to detach the city of Nara from its image as an express tourist destination. The oldest prison in Nippon in Nara will reopen its doors in 2021 but as a luxury hotel with the aim of attracting and increasing the number of foreign visitors arriving in the country to reach 40 million by 2020, promoting the real attractions and tourist beauties of Nara that until now, is only known by the servants of the parks, the great bronze Buddha in the Todaiji Templeo el santuario Kasuga Taisha .

Japanese prisons

Crime in Japan declined, from 70,000 inmates in 2005 to 63,358 in 2015. Its occupancy and incarceration rates are some of the lowest in the world. Although in proportion, the number of older prisoners is one of the highest in the world: almost one in five inmates is over 60 years old.

Death penalty

In Japan there has almost always been the death penalty, although due to Buddhist influences in the Nara period and, especially, in the Heian period, for 300 years there was no type of death penalty. Modern Japan contemplates that certain crimes, such as aggravated murder and treason, may be subject to capital punishment.

The Japanese system establishes that the execution must be carried out within six months after the last appeal of the convicted person has been denied, and must be signed by the Minister of Justice. But the time that the convict spends appealing does not count, so in practice, the time that a sentenced to death in Japan spends on death row is between five and seven years . And there have been extreme cases such as Hirasawa Sadamichi , who died at the age of 95 in prison, and a natural death, after waiting 32 years for his execution. In the case of Shoko AsaharaAlthough many people say that it took 23 years, the reality is that he was found guilty of the attacks and sentenced to death in 2004. In any case, 14 years of waiting until the sentence has been carried out, especially for the successive appeals of his lawyers, the last being in 2016.

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