A Liberal Democratic Party panel has compiled a draft for new legislation to allow district courts to play a key role in deciding on the hospitalization of people acquitted of crimes due to mental illness, party sources said Thursday.
The project team has been discussing such measures following the June killing of eight children at an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, by a man with a history of treatment for mental illness.
The LDP panel will try to win consensus support within the party as well as from its coalition partners and plans to submit a related bill to the Diet during the regular session that opens in January, the sources said.