The Council of Grand Justices on Friday ruled that forced labor as a punishment for criminal offenses is unconstitutional and would no longer be allowed.
Four lower-court judges and 32 citizens challenged the compulsory labor provisions of the Criminal Code and the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例), which allowed “habitual offenders” who have been found guilty of theft, possession of stolen goods or certain organized crime activities to work under supervision at correctional facilities before or after serving a jail sentence.
The provisions are intended to provide assistance to offenders by teaching them work skills or a trade, which is intended to help with their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Under Article 90 of the Criminal Code, a “habitual criminal” or anyone who “commits an offense because of habits of loitering or vagrancy, before execution of punishment, shall be committed” to perform three years of compulsory labor, which can be extended by one-and-a-half years.
Article 3 of the Organized Crime Prevention Act states that a “person initiating, hosting, controlling or directing a criminal organization must be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than three years,” and “before the execution of the punishment, he or she shall be committed to a labor establishment to perform compulsory labor for a period of three years.” Similar provisions are in the Rehabilitative Measures for Burglar and Fence Criminals Act (竊盜犯贓物犯保安處分條例).
Chief Grand Justice and Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) said that offenders were being punished twice for the same crime, working under nearly the same conditions as prisoners, and after the three years of labor, “they go on to serve their sentences,” but “when they are released, their learned job skills could be already out of date.”
The ruling abolishes the compulsory labor, which is served at facilities run by the Ministry of Justice’s Agency of Corrections.
The council ruled that the provisions contravened the principle of proportionality and the personal freedom guaranteed under Article 8 of the Constitution.
Although it was a majority decision, Grand Justice Wu Chen-huan (吳陳鐶) filed a dissenting opinion, while three other grand justices expressed a “partial dissenting opinion” on some aspects of the ruling statement.
Additional reporting by CNA
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
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
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