The Ministry of the Interior's introduction of a new policy of "unmasking suspects but not inviting cameras" is a populist, responsibility-shifting move.
Fears of violating the presumption of innocence have rightly been voiced by the minister's critics, but I wish to discuss three other problems concerning the policy.
First, the primary justification for unmasking suspects is that it enables victims to identify their offenders. But identification of offenders is supposed to be carried out in accordance with formal, scientific procedures, involving identity parades with limits on the number of possible suspects, no hints from police officers and so forth.
Even in such circumstances, wrongful convictions resulting from mistaken identification cannot be ruled out. This is all the more true of "TV identification," which is full of hints and offers no alternative candidates.
In 2001, the National Police Administration introduced regulations on identification procedures, improving investigators' effectiveness and accuracy while also helping the victim to identify the offender. That was a progressive step. Why now go backwards and advocate "TV identification?"
Secondly, some argue that exposing the face of a suspect to the media can assist the public by enabling them to recognize the face so that they can take action to avoid becoming one of his victims should he come into contact with them in the future. This theory is also problematic. Not very long ago suspects in Taiwan were not given masks. Just think: even then, how could people possibly have remembered the faces of the countless suspects appearing on news bulletins so that they could recognize them in a daily encounter at some later date?
In fact, the prevention of most crimes involving victimization of vulnerable people has nothing to do with face recognition. In December last year, during a visit to a police station, Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (
If a victim is so unaware that he repeatedly pays money to a stranger, or even to just an account number -- which has no face -- how can he be expected to avoid falling victim to a criminal just because he once, possibly quite some time ago, caught a glance of the crook's face on TV? This is obviously a misguided approach to crime prevention.
Some say that in order to prevent crime we sometimes need to sacrifice human rights to a certain degree. Well, whether that's true or not, let's at least ensure that the methods they advocate are sensible. Otherwise we could end up sacrificing human rights while achieving nothing to prevent crime.
The third argument is also ridiculous. While announcing the unmasking policy, the minister went as far as to describe it as a policy that protects suspects' rights and upholds the principle that "investigations shall not be made public," because it stipulates that police no longer "actively alert the media to arrests." This directly contradicts comments from the ministry that have favored exposing suspects to the media. If the ministry really cares about suspects' rights and the secrecy of investigations, why not simply make the police responsible for properly managing the release of information about suspects? The only possible interpretation is that the ministry wants the image of being "tough on crime" but doesn't want the blame for violating human rights. Shifting the blame to the media is a convenient way to achieve that.
Jou Ying-cheng is a Taipei-based freelance writer.
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