A group of lawmakers seeking to abolish the death penalty...

A group of lawmakers seeking to abolish the death penalty started discussions on a new set of rules for imprisonment that would eliminate parole for prisoners serving life sentences.
The Diet members' League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, which is headed by Shizuka Kamei, former chairman of Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council, has 113 lawmaker-members in both houses. The lawmakers are planning to submit bills to revise the Penal Code to the extraordinary Diet session this autumn, the group said.
The government has opposed the abolition of the death penalty, and many LDP members have expressed objections to abandoning the capital punishment system. However, many legal experts have complained that under the current system, life imprisonment is not a harsh enough sentence because it allows prisoners to be released on parole after as little as 10 years.
Therefore, they argue, the current system is virtually imprisonment for a definite term.Taking these arguments into account, the group of Diet members concluded that it would be more appropriate to introduce a new, stricter system of lifetime imprisonment as the first step toward the abolition of the death penalty.