The New Power Party (NPP) caucus yesterday proposed an amendment to reduce the workloads of staff in the judicial system amid a dramatic increase in fraud cases.
The nation’s legal system is unable to cope with a rapid increase in fraud because staff are overworked, NPP Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said.
By 2030, courts around Taiwan would need 22,000 staff to meet demand, with the number of additional posts reaching 46 percent of the cap in the Act Governing the Total Number of Personnel Headcounts of Central Government Agencies (中央政府機關總員額法), Chiu said, citing data from a Judicial Yuan report to the legislature.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Ministry of Justice data showed that the number of criminal investigation cases jumped 36 percent from about 470,000 in 2019 to 640,000 last year, while the number of telecom scams increased nearly fivefold, he said.
By contrast, only 240 additional prosecutors and investigators were hired, Chiu added.
Many prosecutors resigned earlier this year, worsening the staff shortage, he said, adding that as a short-term solution, the ministry had assigned legal assistants to prosecutors.
“We hope to increase personnel in the judicial and prosecutorial systems and the number of law enforcement officers by amending the act. This would give them enough staff to manage the surge in fraud cases,” Chiu said.
Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Pai Lee-wei (白禮維) said that workloads in the judicial system could be effectively reduced if the procedures for handling fraud cases were also streamlined.
“The ministry was heading in the right direction when it decided to group fraud cases committed by the same scammer across the country into one account. Instead of filing separate indictments and conducting separate investigations ... the prosecutors’ office that has jurisdiction over the criminal’s registered household address is then in charge of investigating and prosecuting scammers,” Pai said.
Taiwan Police Union director Hsiao Jen-hao (蕭仁豪) said that the nation’s anti-fraud operations have not only exposed the staff shortage problem in the prosecutorial system, but also shown that the National Police Agency severely underestimated demand for law enforcement personnel.
“Our survey showed that the number of officers needed in police stations must be twice as many as those serving on the reconnaissance teams to cope with the workload,” he said.
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