Offering a second chance at life

AT 26, Chen Zhong-ji (陳重吉) had very little going for him. He had just been sentenced to life in jail for murder and was entering prison a high-school dropout whose work experience included little more than collecting debts for gangsters.

Eleven years on, he is free, enrolled in a university course and the manager of a restaurant.

Chen's reversal of fortune is a result of his own change of heart and help from a group of people willing to give parolees a second chance.

The Taiwan After-care Association (台灣更生保護會) is a partly government-funded organization that supports convicts when they finish their sentences.

It was established as a charity in 1947 and is now supervised by the Ministry of Justice and works in association with 19 local prosecutors offices. Half of its funding comes from the government, the rest from donations.

Chen is in many ways typical of the sort of person the association feels it can help.

After leaving his hometown in Chiayi County to study at junior high school in Taipei, Chen quickly became involved in a gang that ran an underground casino.

At the age of 17, having dropped out of school, he was arrested along with his fellow gang members during a police raid on the casino. He was released because of his age, but many of his friends were jailed.

After completing his military service, many of his former gang colleagues had been released. When his old gang leader asked Chen to help, he felt there was little else he could do.

"I wasn't mature enough to know right from wrong. I didn't know how to say no," Chen said. "I started doing stupid things because my `big brother' wanted me to help him collect debts from people."

Chen's luck ran out in 1988, when one of the debtors died. Chen said he didn't know exactly what happened on that day when he and other gang members went to collect a debt from a Chinese medicine trader, only that the next day the man was found dead from suffocation.

He was sentenced to life in jail.

"Even though I was in my 20s, I still couldn't understand the consequences fully. Of course I regret it, but how will regrets help me," Chen said.

So rather than resign himself to a life on the fringes of society, Chen decided to turn his back on the criminal lifestyle and start afresh. He completed his junior and senior high school exams in prison but had to wait until he was paroled on Sept. 9 last year, having served 10 years of his sentence, to enroll in a land economics course at National Taipei University.

It was while he was searching for a part-time job out of school hours that he came into contact with the Taiwan After-Care Association.

Xu Cai-xia (許彩霞) is one of the counsellors at the Shihlin branch of the association. She used to run a bookstore until three years ago, when one of her friends persuaded her that working with reformed criminals would give her an interesting and fulfilling challenge.

"I often went to the prisons to chat with people who were just about to come out," Xu said. "I would ask them: `Do you have problems? Would you like our help?'

"Some would say they needed a job, or a place to stay, or money. I would report to the association to help them find jobs."

At first the association tried to find employers who were willing to take former inmates. Unsupristngly, this proved difficult, so the Ministry of Justice last year approved a plan to allow the association to set up businesses specifically to hire parolees, such as beauty salons, cafeterias and shaved-ice snack shops.