The attempted jailbreak at Kaohsiung Prison on Wednesday prompted calls for reform of the nation’s prison management system, while government officials admitted major flaws.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) yesterday said that the ministry investigate the siege that ended with six prisoners committing suicide, and acknowledged that the prison system had been overcrowded for years.
After a Cabinet meeting, Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said that a Ministry of Justice report found major flaws in prison management that should be corrected immediately.
The government will sternly face the issues of safety regarding inmates, improving risk and crisis management, educational training and prisoners’ access to complaint channels, Mao said.
Chen told a news conference that rehabilitation personnel in the nation’s 48 correctional facilities have all been recalled to work to “stabilize the prisoners’ mood.”
The nation holds 63,000 inmates served by about 8,000 rehabilitation workers, Chen said.
The system is overcrowded, and to balance the scales between the maintenance of human rights and prison management, there were still many hurdles for correctional facilities to overcome, he said.
Elsewhere, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that he did not approve of the prisoners’ approach and strongly denounced how the prisoners had ended the incident by taking their own lives.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) called on the president to grant amnesty or commutation to older prisoners, those with a low risk of reoffending or those who had received light sentences to ease overcrowding — as previous presidents have sanctioned.
“Parole conditions could also be relaxed for [those mentioned], granting them an early release,” he added.
While each inmate should be guaranteed a space of 0.7 ping (2.3m2) according to the regulations, each prisoner has 0.4 ping, Liao said, adding that while there are three or four prisoners for each prison worker in foreign nations, in Taiwan the ratio is about 20-to-1.
Liao said an overloaded prison system could harm inmates and also significantly affect personnel.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said amendments should not be rushed.
“If related laws were immediately amended, [six] would to a certain extent become martyrs or tragic heroes. At this point, what should be done first is to stabilize the prison situation,” Huang said.
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