No one knows better about the ruthlessness of the real world better than a 25-year-old inmate, surnamed Wu, who was sentenced to six years in prison for theft. This is his first return here.
"What do you expect me to do when there's no job for me out there?," said the elementary school drop-out.
According to Wu, he started to steal money from his parents when he was eight or nine years old.
"I don't want to think about the future, because I don't know what it holds for me," he said.
Situated in the Taiyuan basin, the 19-hectare medium-security level facility is 45km away from Taitung City.
A jailbreak in August 2000, however, made the institution a focus of media attention and the security level there has then been tightened.
On Aug. 22, four prisoners, serving sentences between 13 years to life, used heavy rain and strong winds caused by Typhoon Bilis as cover and successfully broke out of the prison.
They were thought to have used a metal bar torn from a bed to break the concrete encasing the steel bars on a window, creating a gap just wide enough for a person to get through.
One of the fugitives was later found drowned in the nearby Mawuku Creek (
That was the third time that inmates had either escaped or tried to escape from one of Taiwan's detention facilities since May of the same year.
A total of 13 prison officers were formally disciplined following the escape.
The harshest punishments meted out were to two prison guards, who were in charge of surveillance and patrol of the area housing the four escapees' cells at the time of their escape. The acting warden also received a demerit.
The whereabouts of the other three escapees is still unknown.
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