Breakdown of law and order?
People are once again talking about a worsening law and order situation, and debating which part of Taiwan is the real “bullet city.” However, I have been hearing the phrase “a breakdown in law and order” for several decades since I was little.
In fact, it has been much the same all along, and there is no real breakdown of law and order in Taiwan. It is just a political talking point for certain people, as well as a sign of their lack of confidence in the nation.
To tell the truth, Taiwan’s law and order has actually improved over time.
How do we know that? The simplest example is that 20 or 30 years ago, in the 1980s and 1990s, Taiwan saw numerous kidnap-for-ransom cases, the most well-known being the 1997 kidnapping and murder of a woman named Chan Chun-tzu (詹春子), for which former police officer Lu Cheng (盧正) was executed on dubious evidence.
The kidnappings led to schools teaching their students how to avoid being kidnapped by strangers. These days, kidnapping cases are rarely heard of, because they have been replaced by Internet fraud, which does not involve violent crime or put anyone’s life in danger.
Society was also shaken by major crimes such as the 1983 killing of two soldiers on guard duty in Hsinchu County, the 1990 murder of Japanese student Mariko Iguchi, the 1996 mass murder of seven people, including then-Taoyuan County commissioner Liu Pang-yu (劉邦友), and the 1997 kidnapping and murder of entertainer Pai Ping-ping’s (白冰冰) teenage daughter, Pai Hsiao-yen (白曉燕).
Even though these crimes took place two or three decades ago, they remain fresh in the memory of anyone who lived through those days.
Furthermore, during that period it was not hard for criminals to get their hands on Chinese-made Type 54 “Black Star” and Type 59 “Red Star” handguns.
Although nearly everyone has access to the Internet these days, homicide cases in recent years tend to get forgotten before very long, because few of them compare with the ones that happened before.
Although major crimes do happen from time to time, it is not fair to label one or another place as a “bullet city” on the grounds of a few isolated incidents.
The best way to know whether there is really a breakdown of law and order is to check the statistics, taking into account the population changes. When there are more people, one would expect there to be more crime, so it is unreasonable to only look at the number of cases. To be more objective, the comparison should be between the average crime incident per 100,000 people in one place during different periods, or two places during the same period. If we compare the figures in this way, the situation has probably not changed very much.
As long as people in Taiwan still dare to go out late at night, unlike certain countries where people dare not go outside after sundown, then there is no real breakdown of law and order in Taiwan.
There is no need to join the chorus of certain people who say that Taiwan has poor law and order, and who send their sons and daughters abroad to study, while they stay behind to make money in Taiwan.
All that achieves is to spoil Taiwan’s image and make everyone lose confidence in their home country.
Yang Hao-min
New Taipei City
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