Mr. Wu, wearing a white chef's hat and a white apron, smiles broadly as he leads 28 men to welcome visitors and supervisors to his kitchen.
"We hardly have so many visitors around here," said the 38-year-old.
Wu is the chief chef of the Taiyuan Vocational Training Institute (
"I hope I will be eligible for parole in another 10 years," Wu said, sporting a white chef's hat and white apron.
Wu had owned an eatery before he was sentenced to jail. During his 10 years in jail, Wu has been taking cooking and sewing courses, hoping that someday when he gets out he will be able to open up a business of his own -- a restaurant or tailor's shop.
"I cannot wait to get out of here and start anew," Wu said.
Once a week, Wu writes home to his wife and daughter, who is attending junior high school.
"There's nothing else in the world that I miss more than my family," Wu said. "I often tell my daughter, in the letters, to stay on the right path and don't ever end up like me."
A 22-year-old inmate surnamed Su, whose hands are tattooed with skulls and roses, said that he would like to find a decent job when he gets out.
"I'd love to be in the food business, but I'm afraid that not a lot of people will be interested in hiring someone like me," said Su, who has just finished the one-year training program for chefs.
If that is the case, Su said, he might choose to help out in his family business of butchering.
Su was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison for burglary.
Formerly a vocational training center for thieves under the Taiwan Garrison Command Headquarters during the martial law era, the institute has been under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice since 1988 when martial law was lifted.
In addition to continuing to jail thieves, the institute now keeps male convicts whose jail terms are 10 years or above for manufacturing, transporting, selling, possessing or using drugs. It also takes in underage convicts receiving reformatory education.
The institute has a total of 1,697 inmates, including 927 drug-related convicts and 720 underage offenders. Its capacity is 1,445.
In a bid to help inmates find a job when they return to society, the facility offers eight different one-year technical training courses ranging from tailoring and cooking to carpentry and air-conditioning repair.
Despite the efforts, however, Hsieh Feng-hsing (
"We regret to say that about 50 percent of our inmates getting out of here come back after failing to find a job," Hsieh said.
The high return rate results from two reasons, Hsieh said.
"First of all, while they're such repeat offenders as thieves or drug users, it's not that easy for them to give up an easy and lucrative job and take up something which pays only NT$20,000 or NT$30,000 a month," Hsieh said.
In addition, not many people in society are keen about the idea of hiring someone who has a criminal record, he said.
"While society is asking us to do our job, the society itself has to do its part by changing its stereotype about inmates and having a more open mind toward them," he said.
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