The Council of Grand Justices on Thursday declared that laws allowing convicted sex offenders to be held in a designated facility for therapy after completing their sentence are “mostly constitutional.”
However, the council ruled it “unconstitutional” that convicted sex offenders are not given an opportunity to express their opinion before holding them for potentially indefinite treatment.
The ruling also said that the Ministry of Justice should ensure that such therapy is undertaken as a form of rehabilitation rather than a punishment.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The only facility that offers such treatment is at Taichung Prison.
The council instructed the ministry to make adjustments to the process within three years to protect the rights of former convicts.
The council made the constitutional interpretation after four petitioners asked it to rule on the constitutionality of holding sex offenders for mandatory therapy after the end of their prison term.
The argument revolved around Article 91-1 of the Criminal Code and Article 22-1 of the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act (性侵害犯罪防治法), which state that sex offenders can be ordered to undergo inpatient treatment after completing their prison terms, if a medical evaluation concludes that there is a danger of recidivism.
While the laws specify that offenders held at therapy facilities must be evaluated annually to determine their progress, they do not set a maximum length for the therapy, meaning that they can in principle be held indefinitely.
The lead petitioner in the case, surnamed Lu (盧), was sentenced to three years in jail for a sexual offense and fraud, but was held in the facility of Taichung Prison for nine years because he was deemed a threat to the public, based on his annual medical evaluations.
After his release from the facility last year, Lu filed for a constitutional interpretation, saying it was unacceptable that he was held for nearly a decade after his jail term.
The petitioners argued that the laws breach the Constitution, which guarantees personal freedom and the principle of proportionality.
Although Judge Chang Yuan-sen (張淵森), one of the petitioners, praised the ruling, he expressed regret that the justices ruled out a maximum limit for mandatory therapy, saying that such decisions should be made case-by-case.
Chang said that while the risk of recidivism among sex offenders is well known, many cases involving them demonstrate a clear lack of proportionality, given that many spend much longer in psychiatric detention than in prison.
If there is no limit on mandatory therapy, people could be locked away for life, regardless of the severity of their crimes, Chang said.
The ministry said it respected the constitutional interpretation, and pledged to make adjustments to the therapy process as soon as possible.
About 60 sex offenders are currently receiving therapy, it said.
The ministry said that the system is being used judiciously, adding that of the 9,049 people convicted under the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act from 2010 to September last year, only 158, or 1.74 percent, have been ordered to receive compulsory treatment, and most have since been released.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching