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.

Under the current system, mental patients accused of crimes but acquitted because of psychiatric problems can be put into a mental hospital, without their consent, at the request of either a prefectural governor or their guardians and with a doctor's consent. They can be released if two doctors determine that their mental state has improved.

The system has also been reviewed by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Justice Ministry.

A plan being considered by the ministries says district courts should cooperate with psychiatrists to determine whether such patients must be placed in mental institutions.

The draft by the LDP team calls for the creation of a new law that will give district courts a major role in the process.

District courts would decide, based on psychiatric analysis by doctors, whether people acquitted or not indicted for their crimes due to mental problems should enter or leave psychiatric institutions.

Psychiatrists, experts on the welfare of the mentally ill and lawyers would be involved in the process. Victims of crimes and their relatives would be allowed to attend hearings where decisions would be made, according to the draft.