Don't Give Up on Judicial Reform Progress, Final Sprint Awaits: 5th Anniversary Press Conference of the National White-Collar/Judicial Reform National Congress

1. No specific progress on the legal front.
2. Following the completion of the Ministry of Justice's commissioned research project, "Study on the Feasibility of Establishing a Judicial Miscarriage Research Center in Taiwan," there has been no institutional planning or progress.
3. The Judicial Yuan asked scholars to analyze controversial individual cases, with a total of over 20 cases completed (used by the Judicial Yuan for internal reference only, not made public). The Judges Academy held three "Special Seminar Sessions on Major Controversial Individual Cases" based on this.

1. Since 2017, there have been 50 retrial reversals at the High Court level and over 80 at the District Court level, representing over 100 judicial miscarriages. However, related review mechanisms by the Judicial Yuan and Ministry of Justice remain insufficient.
2. On July 14, 2022, the Taiwan Association for Innocence and the Judicial Reform Foundation held the "2022 Independent Criminal Case Review System Seminar: UK, Norway, and Taiwan", recommending that the government study and establish an independently functioning "Criminal Finalized Case Review Mechanism."
3. It is recommended that the Judicial Yuan appropriately make public the research results of controversial individual cases completed by scholars to let the outside world understand the causes of wrongful convictions and official review actions.

1. Before the conclusion of the Congress, the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office established the "Convicted Case Review Committee."
2. After completing the amendment of the criminal retrial system, the Judicial Yuan considered that "there is no need to build a redundant separate system" and opposed legislation.

1. The Judicial Yuan considers that further study should be conducted after observing the implementation status of the dossier-separated trial under the citizen judge system.
2. The Ministry of Justice's work list only explains parts related to the Citizen Judges Act, and does not explain dossier-separated trials in ordinary procedures.

1. The result of the National Police Agency's meeting in December 2017 was: "Agree with the problems pointed out by the resolution, but do not adopt the counter-measures of the resolution and propose alternative counter-measures instead."
2. The National Police Agency held the 2020 Project and Evaluation (Check) Plan Review Meeting to amend evaluation contents and project integration.

1. On January 20, 2022, NGOs held a press conference titled "Even Willing to Violate Non-Publicity of Investigation Just to Grab Media Headlines? Demanding the Prompt Establishment of a Police Performance Management Commission", pointing out that there are still cases where frontline police officers engage in improper behavior due to performance pressures.
2. In February 2019, the "Hand-Chop Scam Ticket Case" was finalized with a court conviction. The court also pointed out that the cause of the crime was "to achieve project performance." However, at the time of the incident, the New Taipei City Government Police Department made a big fuss to defend the illegality, showing that senior management's law enforcement concepts are problematic and even mislead many frontline police officers.
3. Summary of statistical data from the Taiwan Police Working Rights Advocacy Association's "Performance System and Police Labor Conditions Questionnaire" (survey years 2018-2021, 2022 ongoing):
   • About 1/4 of police officers indicated that under sufficient pressure, they might adopt mildly illegal law enforcement methods.
   • About 2/3 of police officers indicated that to meet performance requirements, they might use dangerous law enforcement methods.
   • About 2/3 of police officers indicated they had experienced supervisors explicitly or implicitly stating "no leave without performance."
   • Only about 1/8 of police officers indicated they had never used dangerous law enforcement methods. Among dangerous law enforcement behaviors, vehicle pursuits still constitute the vast majority.
   • On average, police officers believe current performance requirements should be reduced to below 1/2, meaning the pressure of the current performance system exceeds the police officers' load capacity by a full 100%. This survey showed no significant change across the 4 years.
   • According to the association's early 2022 "Police Working Rights Association Police Duty Model and Labor Conditions Survey," 80% of police officers believe duty scheduling is affected by performance, such as causing duty and division of labor problems (squeezing out regular rotation manpower for performance, canceled leaves, leave issues, etc.).

1. The Criminal Department of the Judicial Yuan stated it would initiate a drafting group, but there are no concrete actions yet.
2. The Judicial Yuan should formulate guidelines for reasonable adjustments and procedural adjustments in court trial processes in accordance with Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

1. Paragraph 64 of the concluding observations of the 2022 CRPD 2nd National Report Review: "The international review committee expressed concern over the following situations:
   • The Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan have not fully considered the needs of persons with intellectual disabilities, neurodivergent persons, or psychosocial disabilities in the judicial system, nor have they formulated measures to address their disadvantages in accessing justice.
   • The Judicial Yuan has not widely publicized the International Principles and Guidelines on Access to Justice for Persons with Disabilities to judges and court staff. There are no proper systems to guide or monitor its implementation.
   • The Judicial Yuan has not yet formulated any guidelines for judges in criminal or civil proceedings regarding gender- and age-appropriate procedural adjustments they should adopt when responding to requests from litigants with disabilities, nor guidelines on disability categories, potential needs, and judges' communication and interaction methods to meet the needs of persons with disabilities.
   • Although some training on the CRPD has been provided to judges and lawyers, the Judicial Yuan has not yet provided systematic training on providing procedural adjustments for criminal and civil judges, prosecutors, members of bar associations, and police handling persons with disabilities as parties or witnesses in criminal and civil proceedings.
2. Paragraph 66 of the concluding observations, the International Review Committee recommended that the Judicial Yuan:
   • Seek opinions from representative groups such as persons with intellectual disabilities, neurodivergent persons, and psychosocial persons with disabilities regarding their experiences using the judicial system, and issue guidelines consistent with the International Principles and Guidelines on Access to Justice for Persons with Disabilities to address specific disadvantages they face in obtaining access to justice. The guidelines should set out practical methods court staff and judges can adopt to ensure persons with disabilities have access to justice on an equal basis with others.
   • Ensure the Judges Academy provides training on the guidelines for every judge and court staff member in Taiwan, and such training should be provided by experts including persons with disabilities.
   • Establish an advisory body consisting of representatives of various organizations of persons with disabilities and accessibility experts to monitor the implementation of accessibility measures and make recommendations for further improvements.

1. Currently, various pollution regulations have provisions for corporate joint and several administrative penalties.
2. However, regarding civil tort liability, the Industrial Technology Research Institute held a meeting in October 2018 recognizing the necessity of adding "joint and several liability," but no relevant amendment draft has been introduced to date.
3. Reference can be made to the spirit of Article 52 of the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act for amending other pollution regulations.

1. Cases where multinational corporations pollute local environments overseas causing damage and compensation claims. Affected residents usually pursue domestic relief channels. However, under special regimes or authoritarian systems, victimized residents often find no door to seek help, and may even face human rights persecution when seeking judicial relief.
2. In response, our enterprises and national human rights action plan have explicitly stated that we should open the doors of judicial relief for pollution by multinational corporations, and consider the personal safety of victimized residents, simplifying or providing convenient relief pathways to respond in our country, thereby demonstrating that our country is a democratic state governed by rule of law.

1. Amendments regarding the abolition of the requirement for consent from statutory agents or spouses for artificial abortions have not yet been completed.
2. Married women: The Health Promotion Administration stated on the Public Policy Internet Participation Platform on February 1, 2021, that the current amendment direction is to abolish the spouse consent requirement in Article 9 of the Genetic Health Act, allowing married women to autonomously decide whether to reproduce.
3. Minors: According to an official letter issued by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to the Judicial Reform Foundation on December 17, 2020 (Doc No.: 1091762707), for cases where minors undergo artificial abortions without the consent of their statutory agents, the Health Promotion Administration considers having judicial units act as third parties to make rulings.

1. Since fully drafting the amendment to the Public Nuisance Dispute Resolution Act in 2019, there has been no further action. Since the 2018-2019 project work plan for studying and amending the public nuisance incident burden of proof reversal provisions and legal revisions, the final report was approved in December 2019, and a legislative amendment draft was proposed.
2. The draft proposes adding Article 33 provisions on the reversal of the burden of proof, stipulating that when victims claim compensation in litigation over environmental pollution public nuisance incidents, the degree of the victim's burden of proof regarding causality is lowered, and they only need to prove that the actor's operation, management of business, or facilities affected the environment and caused damage with "reasonable probability."
3. However, the amendment has not yet passed.

1. Currently, under the Air Pollution Control Act and Water Pollution Control Act, the imposition of fines allows for the recovery of ill-gotten gains within the scope of profits obtained, but other relevant regulations still lack mechanisms for recovering ill-gotten gains.
2. Provisions regarding the estimation of polluters' ill-gotten gains still cannot be found in any pollution regulations today, so that when polluters' ill-gotten gains cannot be determined, their illicit proceeds cannot be further recovered.
3. This part still awaits specific amendment content to be studied by the Environmental Protection Administration.

1. A research project commissioned by the Ministry of Justice to scholars pointed out in its 2020 research conclusions that regarding the evidence custody system, the Code of Criminal Procedure should be amended and related sub-laws improved. Regarding the identity of seized evidence, the Ministry of Justice is currently studying amendments.
2. The Ministry of Justice is promoting the introduction of "RFID technology to manage stolen goods and evidence warehouses" in district prosecutor's offices, and supervising district prosecutor's offices to clear stolen goods and evidence left unprocessed for over 10 years.
3. The "Deliberation Meeting on Refined Practices for Evidence Custody in Prosecutorial Agencies" produced flowcharts and self-checklist forms for the handling procedures of "drugs and urine," "firearms and ammunition," "valuables," "general," and "large-scale" stolen goods and evidence, and circulated them to prosecutorial agencies at all levels. Relevant regulations, official interpretations, and meeting records were also compiled on the ministry's website for colleagues' reference.
4. The Ministry of Justice held the "Judicial Alliance Chain Establishment and Label Launch Conference" in July 2022, releasing digital verification to make evidence custody and digital evidence preservation more institutionalized.

1. On January 13, 2020, the Taiwan Association for Innocence published the NGO version of the "Criminal Evidence Act."
2. On August 26, 2021, the Alliance of Civil Organizations for Monitoring and Implementing the Resolutions of the Judicial Reform National Congress held the "How to Avoid Wrongful Convictions? Discussing the Establishment of Systems for Evidence Custody and Judicial Science" Symposium in order to improve our country's evidence verification and custody regulations and violation effects.
3. On March 19, 2022, the Taiwan Association for Innocence and the Japan Innocence Project jointly held "Taiwan-Japan Wrongful Conviction Rescue Exchange: New Prospects for Innocence System Reform," discussing reforms of the "Evidence Custody System" in both countries.
4. Current responses from the Ministry of Justice only focus on how evidence is managed, leaving the legal effects of improper evidence management absent. It is recommended that the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice jointly deliberate on regulating evidence verification and custody within the Code of Criminal Procedure and explicitly formulate legal effects for failure to implement them.

1. The positioning of the "Juvenile Correctional Education Research Center" with tasks centered around teacher training, teaching material research and compilation, and teaching quality is identical to the tasks of the current "Juvenile Correction School Correctional Education Guidance Committee." Setting it up separately is redundant, will not necessarily add practical benefits, and increasing organizational staffing has difficulties. Following evaluation, it was deemed that "there is no need to establish the research center."
2. The Ministry of Justice's Administration for K-12 Education is currently studying legislation, and announced the draft of the "Enforcement Regulations for Treatment in Juvenile Correction Schools" in February 2022.

1. Legal aid remuneration for citizen judge cases is currently tentatively set between NT$30,000 and NT$75,000, which may be relatively low compared to the 2-3 times preparation time consumed by ordinary cases, potentially leading to low willingness of lawyers to participate, thereby affecting defendants' rights and the smooth operation of the system.
2. Regarding procedures for operating the citizen judge system, in mock trial practices, there are still occasionally different situations across various courts.
3. The enactment of the Citizen Judges Act was later than the amendments concerning victim litigation participation in Chapter 7-3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and proper design should have been made for how victims in cases undergoing trials with citizen participation could fully participate in litigation proceedings. However, in the current Citizen Judges Act, regarding the rights of victims to participate in trials, Article 73, Paragraph 2 only stipulates that before closing arguments, attending complainants, victims, or their families shall be given the opportunity to express opinions on the scope of sentencing. As for the victim's other rights to participate in the trial, they are completely absent.

1. On June 5, 2022, Lin Wei-ting, project researcher at the Judicial Reform Foundation, published an op-ed titled 【Letting Sunshine Into Correctional Institutions: Expectations for the Selection of External Inspection Members for Correctional Institutions】, proposing problem corrections and suggestions regarding the selection of external inspection members.
2. According to data provided by Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih, as of August 30, 2021, there were a total of 253 external inspection members, among whom 180 were "institution-recommended," and 51 were not included in the "External Inspection Group Expert and Scholar Talent Pool." The proportion of members serving without being recommended from outside to the talent pool was as high as 91%. Among the 51 correctional institutions, 34 institutions had all external inspection group members found by the institution itself, with zero externally recommended members, reaching a ratio of 67%.
3. The Agency of Corrections of the Ministry of Justice invited NGOs to participate in the selection meeting for the next term of external inspection groups, and the Agency of Corrections plans to amend the implementation measures for external inspection groups of prisons and detention centers, with NGOs intending to propose conflict-of-interest provisions.

1. The Labor Incident Act was passed in December 2018 and officially implemented in January 2020.
2. Upon passage, the Legislative Yuan attached a concurring resolution that a review should be conducted 3 years after implementation. The Judicial Yuan held a press conference titled "Effectiveness of the Two-Year Implementation of the Labor Incident Act" in 2022, and also completed the establishment of the "Application by Labor Conciliation Commissioners to Copy Electronic Dossiers" function on the Judicial Yuan electronic service platform in March.

1. The Judicial Yuan has successively completed measures such as compiling and printing interpreter manuals and revising regulations, and procedural documents are also translated.
2. In July 2020, the Ministry of Justice issued an official letter to prosecutor's offices nationwide providing rights notification forms for 5 types of prosecutorial documents: indictments, written requests for summary judgment, non-prosecution dispositions, deferred prosecution dispositions, and revocations of deferred prosecution, which also have foreign language translation versions in English, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, and Indonesian.
3. Regarding coercive measure documents, the National Police Agency has prepared foreign language translation versions in English, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian.

1. Translating judicial documents so that parties are informed of their contents should be one of the basic human rights protections required by Article 14, Paragraph 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and General Comment No. 32 of the Human Rights Committee, but the current level of implementation needs to be strengthened.
2. On November 30, 2021, the Alliance of Civil Organizations for Monitoring and Implementing the Resolutions of the Judicial Reform National Congress held 【Symposium | Unfinished Judicial Reform Resolutions: Foreign Interpreters and Judicial Human Rights Protection】.
3. Important information such as the court's most crucial main text of judgment and remedies instructions are still frequently untranslated in practice.
4. Some terms and phrases across different languages are difficult to translate accurately, and how existing translated texts can be effectively used in practice cannot be evaluated.

1. The Judicial Yuan proposed the "Gender Mainstreaming Training Plan for Judicial Organs and Affiliated Personnel" in 2018, stipulating that personnel hired by the Judicial Yuan, including judges, must take 3 or 6 hours of courses annually according to regulations; the Judicial Yuan held the "Human Rights, Child Protection, and Gender-Friendly Committee" in 2021.
2. The Ministry of Justice held seminars on gender-related cases between 2019 and 2020, and incorporated gender equality courses into pre-service training for judges and prosecutors.

1. Supporting and encouraging the efforts made by the Judicial Yuan, the Executive Yuan, and the Ministry of Justice toward gender-friendly justice in recent years. It is suggested that when implementing gender awareness training, the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice pay closer attention to training effectiveness, such as understanding trainees' training effects through evaluation mechanisms, or actively and proactively collecting experiences and thoughts of victims of gender-based violence facing judicial personnel as a basis for evaluation.
2. Regarding the issuance of protection orders under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, practice takes personal safety as a requirement, and courts tend not to issue them in cases of "mental abuse," which requires further review. Following the implementation of the Stalking and Harassment Prevention Act, the standards for issuing protection orders for stalking and harassment behaviors remain to be observed.

1. Amendment provisions to the Code of Criminal Procedure (regarding victim litigation participation) were passed by the Legislative Yuan upon third reading and implemented on January 10, 2020.
2. The Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan have jointly established the "Criminal Litigation Information Notification Platform for Victims," which has gone online and operates.

1. Affirming the completion of legal amendments by officials and the promotion of the "Criminal Litigation Information Notification Platform for Victims."
2. Petitioning for further study on issues such as granting victims participating in litigation the right to cross-examine defendants and independent rights of appeal.

Judicial Yuan

Council of Indigenous Peoples

1. The Judicial Yuan added a certificate for civil indigenous-type specialized judges, and specialized divisions are established in courts for civil, criminal, and administrative cases.
2. The Legislative Yuan passed the amendment to the Code of Administrative Procedure upon third reading on May 31, 2022, adopting measures to facilitate indigenous peoples or tribes accessing administrative courts (Article 15-3).
3. In June 2021, the Council of Indigenous Peoples promulgated the "Main Points for the Establishment of the Indigenous Judicial Advisory Committee".

1. District prosecutor's offices under the Ministry of Justice officially implemented the review center system starting in September 2020. Statistically, the number of cases received by prosecutors monthly shows a downward trend.
2. On May 31, 2022, the Legislative Yuan passed the Code of Administrative Procedure upon third reading, formulating penalties targeting improper abusive litigation. The amendment to the Code of Civil Procedure newly added provisions for "non-handling" targeting improperly filed retrials.