COR Point 60 Administration of Justice (Articles 9, 10 and 14)
On February 11-12, 2015, a riot erupted at the Kaohsiung Prison during which six convicts took the warden hostage. The six prisoners issued five demands,121 involving many issues on human rights treatment in the prison. The demands concerned standards for review of applications for medical parole and questions about “special privileges, “ the so-called “three strikes” clause in the parole system, the disbursement of labour income and the human dignity of inmates. All six prisoners ultimately committed suicide.122 The Kaohsiung Prison Incident stands as a warning which showed that neither the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Health and Welfare had taken positive actions to implement the Conclusions and Recommendations made by the international human rights experts during the review of the first State report on the ICCPR in January 2013.
The Concluding Observations and Recommendations point out that simply building more prisons is not the best remedy to deal with the overcrowding of prisons. Moreover, during the period of this second State report, the huge social pressure triggered by case of the death by abuse of Army Specialist Hung Chung-chiu led the Legislative Yuan to enact legal revisions that abolished the use of military court tribunals and also led to the transfer of prisoners in two military prisons in Tainan and Taoyuan to civilian prisons under the MOJ Agency of Corrections. These two prisons, namely the Tainan Second Prison and the Bade Minimum-Security Prison, officially began operations on July 16, 2015.123 Although these two prisons combined can hold a total of 1,600 inmates, the Tainan Second Prison was not yet able to accept prisoners as its guard force had not yet entered the grounds. Given the total capacity of 1,100 in the Tainan Second Prison and 500 in the Bada facility, these two prisons are unable to resolve the problem of overcrowding in Taiwan prisons.124 In addition, due to the ceiling imposed on the total number of civil service employees in the central government agencies, the number of corrections personnel will not be increased to meet the manpower needs of new prisons. As a result, problems in deployment and shortages of staffing of correctional institutions will worsen.
Three civil society organizations established a task force on prisons named Taiwan Action on Prison Reform (TAPR)125 In 2014, TAPR began a series of onsite prison inspections and on November 1, 2014 held a conference on the current status and reform policies for Taiwan’s prison system.126 TAPR issued a set of concrete reform demands on January 15, 2015, sent an official statement to the Agency of Corrections and requested a reply.
Regarding health conditions, the TAPR said that better ventilation was commonly needed for cells, supplies of water should not be restricted at night and water tanks should be added to toilets. In addition, the TAPR stated that the AOC should abide by international standards for periods for outdoor activities of at least one hour a day. However, in its reply, the AOC stated that the restriction of water supplies at night was adopted for reasons of the convenience of prison management and to conserve energy. The AOC also stated that if inmates were unable for various reasons to have outdoor activities for at least one hour every day, they were able to exercise during their own free time in their cells. From these replies, it is evident that the AOC has no sincere interest in improving health conditions.
With regard to the right to medical treatment, the TAPR stated that the AOC should re-evaluate the impact of the second generation National Health Insurance System and assess whether the number of clinic visitations was sufficient to meet the needs of inmates (for example, the number of mental health clinic visits to the Taoyuan Women’s Prison were obviously insufficient) and establish mechanisms whereby health agencies could take the initiative to carry out evaluations. The TAPR also stated that CSOs and professional medical NGOs should participate in the improvement of standards for review of applications for medical parole in order to establish a professional evaluation system and that remedial administrative procedures should be set up to handle appeals to rejections of applications for outside hospitalization under custody and medical parole. The TAPR also said the AOC should establish a system for psychological counselling and regular clinical visits to allow inmates to have counselling with fixed counsellors and to ensure realization of counselling ethics, such as the principle of confidentiality. The AOC replied that an increase in the frequency of clinical visits could be considered if they were insufficient and that channels for emergency access to outside medical treatment also existed. However, the AOC also stated that “inmates do not have the freedom of selection of medical treatment and the method of provision of medical services was a matter for the administration of correction institutions. Whether inmates should be treated in prison, sent outside for hospitalization under custody, sent to prison hospitals or granted medical parole were matters that correctional institutions can handle based on doctor diagnosis and recommendations.” From this statement, it can be seen that the provision of medical services to inmates is still highly controlled by the prisons and not the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and Welfare as recommended by the independent experts.
With regard to the issue of privacy, TAHR stated that the right of privacy of defendants under detention was not protected. Each prison had different arrangements for the site of meetings with legal counsel, and sometimes there was no separation between defendants and defendants. Furthermore, litigation material provided by counsel to defendants should not be subject to surveillance or inspection. In its official reply, the AAC stated that, in accordance with Interpretation No. 654 issued by the Constitutional Court issued on January 23, 2009,127 the policy of prisons at present is to “watch but not listen” when lawyers visit and to “open but not read” when inspecting documents. It is evident that the AAC’s measures are still unable to fully protect the right of privacy between inmates and lawyers.
In the State report, the MOJ and the Judicial Yuan have replied to the recommendation by the Experts to relax policies on drug use and introduce less restrictive provisions on pre-trial bail and parole. However, the data provided in the State report by these two agencies shows that they are unwilling to make such liberalizations. The MOJ believes that relaxing treatment of drug crimes is unacceptable since the high rate of recidivism in drug-related crimes would limit the effect of any relaxation on the overcrowding in prisons and that the release of persons convicted on drug-related crimes would harm social order. For its part, the Judicial Yuan only submitted an account of existing laws and statistical data to reply to the recommendations by the independent experts.
Lastly, regarding the question of former president Chen Shui-bian, the MOJ approved his application for medical parole for one month on January 5, 2015. As of the end of 2015, his parole has been extended three times. After being released on medical parole, former president Chen’s health has improved.
- See Jason Pan, “Prisoners take warden, guards hostage,” Taipei Times, February 12, 2015; a report by the Central News Agency (in Chinese) is at http://ppt.cc/437mP.
- Article 77 Section 2 of the Criminal Code mandates: “The recidivist of an offense that carries a principal punishment of minimal five-year imprisonment intentionally commits during the period of parole, in five years after completing the execution of the punishment or after being pardoned after the execution of part of the punishment an offense that carries a minimum principal punishment of not less than five years” will not be eligible for parole.
- See the news report by the Chinese Television System on July 16, 2015(in Chinese).
- According to Agency of Corrections data as of November 30, 2015, the total number of inmates over prison capacity was 7,985 or 14.3 percent of total capacity. As of April 30, 2016, this figure had declined to 6,309 or 11.2 percent of the 56,095 capacity.
- The three organizations were the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Judicial Reform Foundation and the Taiwan Association for Innocence.
- Written reports and the proceedings of the conference (in Chinese) can be found at the following website: http://ppt.cc/eOJGI.
- See http://www.judicial.gov.tw/constitutionalcourt/en/p03_01.asp?expno=654.