The Ministry of Justice yesterday announced new rules for transfers and promotions of prosecutors, instituting a three-year term limit for prosecutors at the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office and its regional branches, after which they are to be rotated back to work at district-level prosecutors’ offices.
“Prosecutors at the district level can apply for transfer to serve at the High Prosecutors’ Office [and its branch offices] and handle cases of second instance,” a ministry statement said. “After a term of three years, they must transfer back to the district-level prosecutors’ offices.”
“However, there will be no limit on the number of times a person can apply to transfer from the district level to the serve at the High Prosecutors’ Office level,” the statement said.
The new measure would enhance professional networking and exchange of experience between district-level prosecutors’ offices and the High Prosecutors’ Office, could help enhance investigative techniques and the quality of work, and might improve prosecutors’ rate of conviction, the ministry said.
The regulations are to take effect this year, but ministry officials said that prosecutors currently serving at the High Prosecutors’ Office and regional appellate courts are to be exempt, and would not be forced to rotate back to the district-level offices.
The measure, colloquially known as “Rotation of prosecutors between first-instance and second-instance levels of the judiciary,” was initially proposed by a group of younger prosecutors and was among the recommendations at last year’s National Congress on Judicial Reform.
The reformist prosecutors said that changes must be made because transfer and rotation policies were too restrictive, rigidly controlled and opaque, basically “entrenching the prosecutors at the High Prosecutors’ Office for life.”
“The prosecutors at district levels have incredibly heavy workloads and handle a large number of cases, but those serving at appellate courts have higher salaries, better perks and much lower workloads. This creates an unfair, inequitable situation,” a prosecutor was quoted as saying by the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).
“The process through which people are promoted or get transferred to offices in desired locations is not transparent,” said the prosecutor, who declined to be named.
Although the ministry yesterday endorsed the new measures, it has been reported that the upper echelons of the nation’s judiciary, including Minister of Justice Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), opposed or held off their implementation.
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