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A team of female prison guards in Japan has formed a dance troupe to soften the job's public image and encourage more women to join, it's reported.

The group, called M-girls, is made up of five women who work at a prison in the southern Yamaguchi region, . The guards, aged between 21 and 33, don colourful outfits on stage and have been a hit both in and outside the prison since making their debut at a local karaoke competition last year. "We have forged close ties with local residents and I think people now feel closer to prison guards," says the M-girls' leader, who asked to remain anonymous because of the nature of her day job.

The dance group idea was thought up by the prison's first female administrative manager, Hiromi Kobayashi. "We wanted to do something you would never think that a prison would even try doing," she says.

The prison can hold up to 800 female inmates - more than anywhere else in Japan. But retaining female guards has been a problem. The justice ministry says almost a third of them quit after less than three years - double the rate of their male counterparts. The government wants to recruit 200 female prison guards to the workforce nationwide over the next three years.

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