The New Power Party (NPP) would seek to reform the nation’s parole system by pushing for amendments to the Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) and Prison Act (監獄行刑法), the party told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Whether a prisoner may be released on parole is determined by the Ministry of Justice, which has the authority to approve prisoners’ parole applications, NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said.
“Imagine a criminal who has finally been sentenced to prison after a lengthy process of investigation and trials, and then [waits for] the ministry to decide whether they need to serve only half of their sentence,” he said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“The system is flawed, because theoretically only the judiciary has the authority, to determine the scope and level of punishment meted out to criminals — not the administrative branches,” Huang added.
Giving the ministry such power has caused many problems and there have been numerous instances of criminals being granted parole by taking advantage of a lack of supervision in the application process, he said.
“The administrative branches must no longer be allowed to remain unsupervised and unchecked. This is why the party has proposed reforming the parole system by amending the Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and Prison Act,” Huang said.
Instead of allowing prisons to apply to the ministry for parole on behalf of prisoners, prosecutors should apply to courts, which would then decide whether to grant parole, he said.
“This was the shared opinion of experts at a public hearing I held at the legislature on the parole system,” Huang added.
In addition, the party plans to propose amending the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and Labor Inspection Act (勞動檢查法), NPP caucus convener Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
Article 80-1 of the Labor Standards Act stipulates that the government must publish the names of companies that violate the act, as well as the business owners’ names, he said.
“The party believes that the article should be amended to include the provisions that were violated, the date of the ruling and the punishment meted out, such as fines,” he said, adding that the information should not be hidden.
Under the Labor Inspection Act, company union representatives must be present during labor inspections, but most companies do not have their own unions, Hsu said, adding that only 6.4 percent of Taiwanese are members of such unions.
The party proposed amending the definition of union in the act to include industry and vocational unions, he said.
Although the legislative session is to end soon, the party hopes to work with other legislators to promote reform in the two areas, Hsu said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods