The Ministry of the Interior and other agencies plan to soon propose amendments to the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法), given the high number of cases in which people apply for protective orders, but continue to be abused while waiting for the order to be granted — a situation which seriously infringes upon people’s right to life and legal protection. The frequency of such cases clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of Taiwan’s social safety net.
National Police Agency data showed that there were 136,781 reported cases of domestic violence last year — 9,419 more cases compared with a year earlier, or a 7.4 percent increase. Additionally, the number of domestic violence cases referred as criminal cases for prosecution reached 13,831 last year, a rise of nearly 60 percent compared with 2021.
Both figures mark a five-year high. About half of those cases involve intimate partner violence, with one domestic violence incident occurring every 3.84 minutes on average.
Under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, protection orders are categorized by the perceived urgency of the applicant’s circumstances and the judicial process. Emergency protection orders are issued within four hours of the application, while temporary protection orders and ordinary protection orders are adjudicated within two months.
Among domestic violence cases handled by the police, about 20 percent of people apply for protection orders. However, Ministry of Justice data from 2022 to 2024 indicate that the average time needed to issue protection orders was 2.26 hours for emergency orders, 23.4 days for temporary orders and 51.94 days for ordinary orders. This demonstrates that between the time of application and issuance, there remains a large gap during which judicial protection is absent.
Furthermore, the current systems in place — such as the National Police Agency’s domestic violence and child protection case management system, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s protective services information system and even the Judicial Yuan’s information system — have yet to be integrated. As a result, frontline law enforcement officers are unable to access the most up-to-date information in real time.
For example, if a protection order has already expired, but the system has not been promptly updated, the police might make an arrest for an alleged contravention of the order. Thus, a real-time reporting and data integration platform for domestic violence and child protection cases should be established to prevent such gaps in information.
Police officers and judicial personnel are already overwhelmed with heavy caseloads and insufficient manpower. Given the high volume of domestic violence cases, introducing 24-hour electronic monitoring of the parties involved when issuing protection orders could disrupt institutional operations. Such a measure would merely increase responsibilities on personnel without providing adequate mechanisms of support, and might further accelerate the collapse of the system.
I once visited a university and rented a public electric scooter to ride around campus. The scooter only operated within certain areas — if it went beyond designated boundaries, it would immediately lose power.
Drawing on this experience, if there is a need for law enforcement, people subject to domestic violence protection orders could be fitted with electronic ankle monitors with artificial intelligence and GPS technology. If they approach a restricted zone — within 100m of the victim’s residence or workplace, for example — or come into contact with the victim, the device could immediately emit an alarm or a warning reminding the applicant to take protective measures or seek assistance from passersby to report the incident. At the same time, the device would automatically report back to the relevant authorities to protect the parties involved.
Wang Hsiang-cheng is a civil servant.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS