Efforts to rehabilitate young people who have been involved with gangs need a boost, with the fatal stabbing of a New Taipei City school student last month underscoring the flaws in efforts so far, the Action Alliance on Basic Education said yesterday.
The excessively narrow definition of at-risk young people in the Juvenile Justice Act (少年事件處理法) has resulted in a lack of supervision for many gang-involved youths, including the alleged killer, alliance chairman Wang Han-yang (王瀚陽) said.
In 2019, lawmakers amended the act in a bid to emphasize guidance for young people rather than enforcement of laws, but did not provide administrative and judicial branches with mechanisms to coordinate their actions, Wang said.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
This results in gang-involved youths being excluded from the definition of at-risk juveniles, sluggish response from the justice system in juvenile cases and probation officers’ nonparticipation in school matters, he said.
The number of juveniles with a criminal history in Taiwan rose to 775 per 100,000 in 2021 from 638 per 100,000 in 2014, said Bill Hsu (許福生), a professor of law at Central Police University.
Premeditated crimes account for more than 50 percent of convictions involving underaged offenders, with fraud being especially prevalent, Hsu said, adding that there has been an increase in efforts by criminal groups to exploit young people.
An effective strategy to reduce youth participation in criminal activity must involve a combination of a robust law enforcement response and educational guidance, he said.
“There would be no youths involved in gangs if there were no gangs,” he said.
The government’s juvenile reform programs are underperforming, former Taiwan Care Management Association president Chang Su-hui (張淑慧) said.
More than 55 percent of students at Chengjheng High School — a juvenile correctional school in Hsinchu County’s Sinfong Township (新豐) — reoffended within a year and 80 percent reoffended within three years, Chang said.
Last year, juvenile courts put 4,000 adolescents on probation, but youth rehabilitation committees reported providing guidance to 304 of the 541 adolescents they were tasked to process, she said.
To improve its crime prevention capabilities, Taiwan should consider remodeling youth rehabilitation committees after the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s youth center, she said.
The Ministry of Justice needs to assign more social workers, addiction treatment therapists and counselors to support juvenile probation officers, who should be divested of investigative responsibilities to reduce their workload, she said.
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