Page 7 - 矯政期刊-第十期第一卷

1

DOI：10.6905/JC.202101_10(1).0001 ኪஔሞഹ

The penal power’s transformation among correctional officers
in Taiwan:

Taking Chief Justice’s Judicial Interpretation No. 653 as a

demarcation point

Abstract Chang, Ting-Yu, Peng, Shih-Che, & Lai, Yung-Lien

The primary purpose of this study is to examine if the penal power of
corrections officers has changed before and after the demarcation point of Chief
Justice's Judicial Interpretation No. 653 held in 2008. As known, Taiwanese
corrections officers emphasized control, monitor, and discipline in the management
of prisoners, suggesting less emphasis on distributive justice and substantive
justice, as well as inmates' rights before the 21st century. However, due to the
announcement of Chief Justice's Judicial Interpretation No. 653, along with the
burgeoning development of human rights in prisons, the correction officers seem
more likely to stick to procedural justice/due process rule and emphasize the
feelings and rights of inmates. It also seems to be a model of the transformation
from a "Hard Power Paradigm" to a "Softer Power Paradigm" which has been
advocated by the Crewe (2007), or similar to Ren's (2018) argument: (the penal
power paradigm) shifted from a contracted co-management by prisoners' cadres
and corrections officers to a humanized management carried by correctional
officers in the way of emphasizing human rights and the rules of laws. In order
to verify whether there is such a model of the transformation of the penal
power in Taiwan corrections system, this study employs qualitative research to
interview five inmates who have been housed in prisons for more than 25 years
and experienced penal power's swift before and after 2008. Those in-depth
interviews have been arranged from the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020 in
three different prisons ranging from the northern part to the southern parts island-
wide. Based on their narratives, this study reveals the penal power of correction
officers does present a style that is inconsistent with the past (before 2008) and
recent times (after 2008), which means it shifted from a strict management style to
a more humane law enforcement method. Also, the management style has indeed

5