First Step to Preventing Lynching: Enhancing Prison Transparency

On November 1, Apple Daily exclusively reported that a Kaohsiung Prison inmate allegedly died from lynching, with two guards and four handymen detained. The truth remains unclear and is still under investigation. The Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF) has also previously received public complaints regarding suspected lynching in correctional facilities. Cases handled by the JRF include stun gun use, guards beating inmates in security camera blind spots, guards failing to intervene when inmates were assaulted by peers, being sprayed with cold water as a disciplinary measure, and being shackled. When parties fail to report these incidents immediately, evidence is often lost, making it difficult to uncover the truth.

For such suspected prison lynching cases, the ideal approach is prevention over post-incident investigation. One of the key methods of prevention is "transparency." Correctional facilities are inherently closed environments, meaning outside parties may not necessarily know when incidents occur. In the cases received by the JRF, the vast majority of individuals sought assistance only after being released. When further asked why they did not report the incidents immediately, the parties often stated that while inside the facility, their mail was read, and their visits were monitored and recorded, leaving them with many concerns. Enhancing transparency would reduce outside misunderstandings of actual prison operations. Furthermore, when individuals inside know that outsiders can monitor the situation, they are less likely to feel justified in using lynching, and less likely to feel that others can make baseless accusations.

Furthermore, even if a lynching incident does occur, thorough transparency helps reveal the high-risk structural conditions that gave rise to it. For instance, overcrowding degrades living conditions for inmates, easily leading to conflicts and emotional instability, which in turn brings management difficulties. Prison staff facing management pressure and long working hours suffer from burnout, leading to a loss of emotional control. Alternatively, inmates with mental health conditions may be accepted by prisons despite a lack of mental health service providers and referral mechanisms. Recognizing the high-risk structures behind lynching forces the public to confront the fact that continually sending people to prison without adequate supporting measures is not a sound solution to social problems.

So, how can "transparency" be achieved? The draft amendments to the Prison Act currently pending in the Legislative Yuan contain multiple measures to enhance prison transparency. Establishing an external inspection team is one of the most directly relevant preventive mechanisms, serving the straightforward function of making prison conditions as transparent to the outside world as possible.

Ideally, inspection commissioners should be able to enter correctional facilities periodically or unannounced to interview inmates and staff, listening to various perspectives in an undisturbed environment, and reviewing data and records when necessary. The inspection team must also issue public reports so the outside world knows what the commissioners saw and heard, and how any problems or conditions within the prisons occurred.

Additionally, safeguarding inmates' ability to communicate with the outside world without interference under specific circumstances is an important measure. This includes ensuring that correspondence between inmates and government agencies or appointed attorneys is inspected only for contraband without reading its contents, and that visits between inmates and appointed attorneys are visually monitored without eavesdropping. Ensuring that the authentic voices of inmates are heard by the outside world at the very beginning allows the truth to be clarified promptly. Passively, this avoids misunderstandings; actively, it helps explore the underlying causes behind incidents.

However, the current legislative session is scheduled to end on December 15, and the draft amendments to the Prison Act—which are closely tied to prison transparency—have yet to complete cross-party consultations and second and third readings. If the bills fail to pass during this session, they will be subject to the rule of lapse, requiring the administrative branch's proposal and the legislative process to start all over again, causing severe stagnation in prison reform. We earnestly urge the Legislative Yuan to prioritize the issue of prison transparency and pass the legislation swiftly to prevent suspected lynching events in prisons from happening again.

※ This article was published in Apple Daily on 2019.11.02