Beginning next month, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations will begin printing and distributing formatted notebooks in which criminal suspects can keep records of interrogations by police and prosecutors.
The unprecedented move aims to improve transparency and prevent investigators from coercing suspects into making confessions through illegal grilling methods or writing interrogation records that do not reflect the will of suspects, according to lawyers who have been working to realize the distribution of these "suspect notebooks."
The bar federation will encourage member lawyers at bar associations across Japan to hand the notebooks to criminal suspects, who are interrogated behind closed doors, usually in "daiyo-kangoku," or substitute prison cells at police stations.