Minister of Justice Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) yesterday pledged to continue the push for judicial reform, with the aim of achieving more transparency in the justice system, strengthening institutional mechanisms to better protect the rights of victims and initiate new plans to build new prisons to alleviate overcrowding in the nation’s jails.
Chiu outlined six major reform measures, most of which were discussed and advocated by the preparatory committees for the National Congress on Judicial Reform, which is scheduled to hold its final meeting on Saturday next week.
“Although there are many difficulties and thorny issues on the road to judicial reform, the ministry shall do the work and make progress in gradual steps,” Chiu said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“We appreciate the numerous recommendations from across society,” he said, adding that the ministry would “take their advice and carry out reform to meet the public’s trust and expectations.”
The first task on Chiu’s agenda is to promote openness in the nation’s prosecutorial system and improve the evaluation system for prosecutors.
“With regard to transparency, we want to have prosecutors’ indictment statements available to the public after local courts have made their first rulings on the case. This can be done by posting them on official sites for public viewing,” he said.
“To do so, we need to amend the Organic Law of Courts (法院組織法). The ministry has drafted the amendment and procedure requires it to be reviewed by the Judicial Yuan by next month, after which we will forward it to the legislature for review and approval later this year,” he said.
The other measure calls for more public input and participation in the prosecutorial system, where a committee composed of outside experts and people of good standing in society would review major judicial cases in which prosecutors have dropped charges or have chosen not to press ahead with criminal prosecution.
Chiu said he would institute a more impartial prosecutorial system by imposing stricter rules on observing confidentiality of cases under investigation, with better monitoring to guard against leaks of confidential information, impose stronger punishment on offenders and punish supervising officials depending on severity of the violation.
He also outlined plans to set up a self-monitoring mechanism to take up applications for case review as a way to prevent wrongful conviction of innocent people, along with measures to improve the efficiency of the prosecutorial system and amendments to protect whistle-blowers.
Another major reform measure would be to better protect the rights of victims, as well as the rights of convicted criminals.
Changes in the justice system are being made for crime victims to apply for review of case evidence, and also to enable them to independently request for appeal, Chiu said.
To alleviate overcrowding in prisons, two new prisons are being built in Taoyuan County and Changhua County, which should be completed in the next few years, the minister said.
The new facilities will be able to accommodate a total of 3,500 inmates, and plans are under way to expand existing facilities to improve conditions for prisoners, he said.
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