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The latest fashion craze hitting Tokyo comes from an place most don’t consider very fashionable… jail. The inmates at Hakodate Juvenile Prison have produced a line of cotton aprons, bags, and pouches that are sweeping Japan. All of the designs are sold out from their prison’s official Internet store.
These items officially went on sale in 2006, but just not recently caught on due to the government corrections association starting to carry the line at its Tokyo outlet store. Now orders are flooding in and inmates can’t keep up.
The logo is the Kanji symbol for jail, and below is the English word “Prison.” Shoji Nakajima, and official at the Correctional Association for Prison Industry Cooperation said,
We thought the character for ‘jail’ would turn people off, but that turned out to be the big appeal. Especially, young people seem to like it.
What do the inmates think of it? Well, there are 81,000 inmates at 70 Japanese prisons taking part in making the goods. However, they have no choice in the matter as its part of mandatory prison labor in Japan. They don’t get any part in the profits made by the garments.
Should the prisoners see some sort of compensation from the record sales of these items? Or are they not entitled to any of it due to having committed crimes.
Via Komo News.
I think this is an AWESOME idea! 1. it provides the inmates with a trade. 2. The stuff is just too cool. 3. (and most important) inmates are actually paying for their incarceration and reducing the tax burden!
That’s a really good point. I guess I was focused on the negative view of it, but from what I heard about how much it takes to keep those in jail “alive” (food, clothing, etc), Hakodate may be onto something here.