Op-Ed | The "Addition and Subtraction Project" to Alleviate the Judicial Burden

Recent news reports about police and prosecutors being overwhelmed by a massive influx of cases, prosecutors collapsing and being hospitalized due to severe overwork, judges collapsing on the bench, and even briefly losing vital signs demonstrate that the crushing caseload has brought the judicial system to the verge of collapse. According to statistics from the Judicial Yuan, the number of newly received cases by prosecutors and judges across Taiwan has increased year by year, with some monthly figures soaring past one hundred. Among them, newly received telecommunications fraud cases surged 3.6-fold in the three years from 2019 to 2022; the total number of newly received investigative cases last year already surpassed the entire 2021 annual volume by September. Coupled with the exodus of prosecutors that erupted in June of last year, the pressure of handling cases has added insult to injury.

Since the "reduction of the burden of case processing" was first proposed at the National Judicial Reform Conference in 1999, after more than 20 years of discussion, the burden on Taiwan's judiciary has only become heavier. The overloaded workload has weighed on the shoulders of judicial officers for years, not only causing trial activities to lose focus, but also casting doubt on the quality of some judgments and ringing alarm bells for the health of judicial officers.

How to alleviate such a heavy judicial burden can be considered from two aspects: the addition project of "supplementing judicial manpower," and the subtraction project of "further streamlining judicial procedures."

Regarding the "addition project," the Ministry of Justice has promoted a prosecutor's assistant system to cope with the ongoing exodus of prosecutors and the explosion of fraud cases, and has completed the recruitment of 100 assistants. However, while this measure serves as an emergency fix, it is not a long-term solution. The government should comprehensively review the utilization and allocation of judicial manpower and then propose a reasonable plan for expanding personnel. In this regard, the New Power Party caucus also proposed a legislative amendment to relax the total personnel cap. On the other hand, the operational efficiency of the current system should be reviewed simultaneously; otherwise, it will devolve into an ineffective project that merely increases manpower without seeing any efficiency.

As for the "subtraction project," investigative practice often expends excessive time and energy investigating minor or vexatious litigation cases before issuing a "non-prosecution disposition," thereby crowding out investigative energy for important cases. Considering the skyrocketing caseload in the prosecutor and police systems, in cases where the infringement of legal interests is extremely minor or there is clearly no litigation benefit, one might consider adding a processing method in the Code of Criminal Procedure whereby "minor offenses are not investigated and a non-prosecution disposition is directly issued." Such cases do not have high public interest and are not serious; justice should be pursued or compensation for damages obtained through other avenues such as civil litigation, and there is truly no absolute necessity for investigation by a prosecutor. Only in this way can the energy of the prosecutors' offices be saved, enabling them to have the vigor to investigate truly major and urgent cases and maintain the quality of case handling.

At present, police and prosecutorial agencies spend most of their time and energy merely pursuing the tail ends of organized crime chains. In addition to continuously deterring the public from serving as cash couriers or dummy account holders for fraud rings, the government should further enhance controls by other administrative agencies. For instance, it should strengthen the Financial Supervisory Commission's regulation of dummy accounts, the National Communications Commission's control over overseas telecommunication numbers, and the Ministry of Digital Affairs' design of capital or business-opening restrictions for third-party payment operators. This would reduce the exploitation of dummy accounts, mobile phone numbers, and third-party payments by fraud syndicates, making it harder for them to create "break points" and increasing the chances of police and prosecutors tracing them. Only then can fraud rings be rooted out from the upper stream and the surge in telecommunications fraud be effectively alleviated. While increasing manpower, the government must also attach importance to the burden-reducing "subtraction project" so that police and prosecutors can invest more time and energy in tracing origins, striking at the source of organized crime, and allowing law enforcement personnel to focus their hearts and minds where they truly ought to be invested.

※ This article was published in Up Media on February 5, 2024: Op-Ed: The "Addition / Subtraction Project" to Alleviate the Judicial Burden