Restorative Justice in Taiwan: An Overview

Although the ministry of justice in Taiwan is just beginning to initiate the first “restorative justice programme”, the idea has been the focus of both official discourse and academic investigation since 2000. There are a few forces behind this newly emerged restorative justice urge. Traditionally, post colonization Taiwan society is described as an ‘inwardly Confucian, outwardly legalistic’ (內儒外法) society, in which informal institutions preempted the transplanted formal legal institutions. The Taiwan people have a long history of using alternative dispute resolution mechanism. More recently, the government is under increasing pressure of promoting judicial human right. The introduction of adversary system can not be deemed beneficial of promoting victim’s right. The controversial issue of abolishing death penalty also rises another wave of victim movement. The reform of criminal justice system to serve multiple purposes has become one of the prioritized government agenda. In this article, I describe three practical forms of restorative justice: juvenile justice system (少年司法制度), participatory justice (參與式司法), and mediation service for criminal cases (刑事案件調解). In the end, I critically review the current legal structure to address the background of the 2010 restorative justice programme under Ministry of Justice (法務部修復式司法試行方案).