Commentary | Post-Judicial Reform: The Disappearing Issues Concerning Children and Juveniles

After three months of intensive subcommittee meetings, the plenary session of the National Judicial Reform Conference is finally set to take place on August 12.

When would the plenary session be held? How would it be conducted? How could we persuade other members at the plenary session to support the subcommittee resolutions? Would the relevant courts and ministries accept and implement the final resolutions? These were all concerns raised by members of Subcommittee 5, to which I belong, after the subcommittee meetings concluded at the end of May, and we repeatedly asked the convenor and staff about them. However, the date and procedures of the plenary session remained shrouded in mystery, and no matter how much we inquired, we could not find out.

On July 14, the Office of the President first announced 12 major key issues, condensing the resolutions of the five subcommittees into 12 major categories. At the same time, it clarified that "the conclusions passed by subcommittee votes are the conclusions of the National Judicial Reform Conference," and tasked the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice with drawing up subsequent work plans and timelines for each subcommittee resolution, which were expected to be announced one week before the plenary session.

Upon seeing these explanations, the members felt slightly reassured and calmly awaited the work plan and timeline data from the courts and ministries. On August 4, we finally received the materials sent by the Presidential Office staff, only to discover that several resolutions from Subcommittee 5 had not been included in the planning by the courts and ministries. The members began to question: Where did these resolutions disappear to?

Subcommittee 5 was responsible for deliberating on the theme of "Judiciary for Maintaining Social Safety." The issues involved areas such as children and juveniles, gender, the prison system, drugs, and crime prevention. Members with backgrounds in juvenile affairs, correctional systems, women and children, criminal law, criminology, police administration, financial investment, media, and politics examined the gaps and deficiencies in the "social safety net" based on current dilemmas, and then formulated proposed solutions based on these flaws. Given the broad scope of the issues and their involvement with the jurisdiction of different ministries and departments, the meetings not only invited ministries such as the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Labor to participate, but also included field visits to the Changhua Juvenile Detention School, Mingyang High School, and Yilan Prison to explore the restructuring and transformation of correctional institutions. Furthermore, experts and practitioners in the fields of law, pediatric and juvenile healthcare, and drugs were invited for consultations and discussions. To complete the various resolutions within the March-to-May session, members compressed their personal lives and work schedules to devote themselves to the research and discussion of various issues, ultimately completing resolutions in six major areas: "Review of the Juvenile- and Gender-Friendly Judicial System," "Reform of the Prison System," "Review of Criminal Policies on Substance Abuse and Mental Illness Crime," "Combating Crime Effectively," and "Crime Prevention and Management."

Among them, the item "Review of the Juvenile- and Gender-Friendly Judicial System" (please click the link to view the resolutions and explanations) focused particularly on discussing the dilemmas encountered by the judiciary in handling and counseling juvenile delinquents. First, attention was drawn to the juvenile detention schools and Cheng-Cheng High School, where accidents had occurred repeatedly (including the murder case of the youth surnamed Mai, the prolonged hanging of a juvenile in the laundry yard, the murder case where a youth surnamed Li was beaten to death with five punches, student bullying, and failure to provide special education services to students with special education qualifications). Seeing that juvenile correctional institutions repeatedly suffered incidents that harmed the physical safety and lives of juveniles, and that the Agency of Corrections was powerless to turn the situation around, the committee proposed several resolutions regarding the restructuring and systematic transformation of juvenile correctional institutions in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating further, and suggested that the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Ministry of Labor provide cross-departmental assistance.

Second was the issue of child and juvenile placement. Since the collective sexual assault and over-capacity incidents broke out at a placement institution in Nantou, private placement institutions have also begun closing down due to operational difficulties, making the plight of juvenile delinquents having nowhere to be placed even more precarious. To resolve issues such as "difficult-to-place children," institutional operations, and the schooling of placed children and juveniles, it was specifically resolved to request the Ministry of Health and Welfare to establish public-run and public-owned placement institutions, the Judicial Yuan to allocate sufficient child and juvenile placement funds, and the Ministry of Education to study legal amendments to properly safeguard the right to education of placed children and juveniles.

Finally, there was the issue of treatment methods and resource integration for children and juveniles using drugs. Considering the characteristics of drug-using children and juveniles—where improving the environment and rebuilding healthy interpersonal and social bonds are the solutions—it was recommended that the Agency of Corrections review the current addiction assessment and treatment mechanisms under observation and detention disposition, and that the Ministry of Labor adjust its policies to strengthen juvenile skills training and employment counseling. Through training programs, drug-using children and juveniles can be helped to acquire skills, and subsequently transition their living or social environments through employment. Additionally, because young people have limited financial resources in the early stages of employment and still require support from others, it was recommended that the Ministry of Health and Welfare amend the law to include community juveniles as service recipients of the independent living adaptation program, with the expectation that under the cross-sectoral cooperation of the courts and ministries, comprehensive assistance programs can be provided.

The handling of juvenile delinquents is not purely a judicial issue. Every counseling and assistance measure inevitably involves matters under the jurisdiction of other ministries. However, this plenary session failed to invite these ministries to participate, and the work plans and timelines proposed by the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice even omitted some resolutions from Subcommittee 5. This cannot help but make the members of this subcommittee feel worried: Have the issues concerning children and juveniles been marginalized once again?

As the countdown to the plenary session begins, can the missing resolutions be restored and properly planned before the meeting? I hold no expectations. The oversight of reform must ultimately return to the people. This National Judicial Reform Conference has accumulated a wealth of data and advice, and in the future, civil society organizations should regularly review the government's progress in implementation. Although some government departments will inevitably retain an attitude of evasion or perfunctoriness, as long as civil forces can converge and maintain continuous attention, I believe the goal of reform can surely be achieved. Rather than relying on the government, we must rely on our own efforts. After all, save your own country yourself! Supervise your own government yourself!