Human rights groups in Taiwan launched a petition on December 8 opposing draft legislation that would eliminate parole eligibility for individuals convicted of murder, attempted murder, or child abuse resulting in death. The petition, which has attracted support from many lawyers and law professors, follows a joint statement filed by the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty and the Judicial Reform Foundation arguing the proposal constitutes inhumane treatment and risks mass incarceration.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice proposed the draft on October 30, 2025. Under the proposal, individuals convicted of murder, attempted murder, or child abuse resulting in death and sentenced to imprisonment of over 10 years or life imprisonment would not be eligible for parole under Criminal Code Section 77.

The draft legislation emerged following the “Kai-Kai case,” a 2023 child abuse incident by two babysitters which resulted in a one-year-old’s death. The case aroused public fury and ignited demonstrations in Taipei in March and May 2025, with protesters calling for more punitive criminal policies on violent crimes, especially those endangering children.

The proposal also reflects Taiwan’s longstanding use of parole policy as a “crime-fighting” tool. Around the 1990s, several serious murder cases, including the Peng Wan-Ru case and the Pai Hsiao-Yen case, deepened public insecurity. In response, the government tightened the parole approval rate from 58.8% in 1994 to 36.8% in 2004. In 2005, the government increased the minimum time to be served before life-sentenced inmates become eligible for parole from 15 to 25 years. Additionally, recidivists who have committed offenses punishable by a minimum statutory sentence of five years’ imprisonment become ineligible for parole if convicted of another offense subject to the same level of punishment—a mechanism similar to, but less punitive than, the “three-strikes law” in the United States. These changes emphasized preventing recidivism, risk management, and controlling the danger posed to society, affirming the government’s intention to employ parole policy as a crime-fighting tool.

The October draft can be seen as a consequence of the interplay between the public’s call to end violent crimes and the Taiwanese government’s punitive tendency in the face of such demands.

However, human rights groups raise serious concerns over this trend. Most importantly, they argue that life sentences without parole constitute inhumane treatment. Such treatment causes excessive mental distress and deprives individuals of dignity and hope. In a 2024 Constitutional Judgment, Judge Yue Bo-xiang (尤伯祥) pointed out in his concurring opinion that life imprisonment without opportunities for parole is, in fact, a complete denial of one’s citizenship and permanent exclusion from society. Under this treatment, these individuals are deemed as “the others” outside society, and there would seem to be no need to provide correctional treatment for them, as they have no chance to return to normal social lives. Therefore, a life sentence without parole deprives one’s dignity and seriously undermines the objective of the parole system—a mechanism to motivate and assist rehabilitation.

Secondly, joint statements from human rights groups argued that lifelong sentences without parole pose serious risks to the prison system. A policy that relies exclusively on increasing incarceration in response to crime will result in mass incarceration. The consequent overpopulation in prisons will result in an imbalanced prisoner-to-staff ratio, causing difficulties in management, and ultimately, the breakdown of some prisons.

Lastly, they argued that the reform is not evidence-based and lacks sufficient human rights impact assessments. In the absence of empirical evidence suggesting the need for a stricter parole policy, and given that parole rules are already strict following the 2005 reforms, there is no justification for tightening the parole threshold again. Instead, policy efforts should focus on seeking a more reasonable basis for parole policy, rather than always pursuing stricter standards.

While it is positive to see Taiwanese society paying greater attention to ending violent crimes, it is imperative that we maintain a critical perspective on the government’s response. The question is whether we are marching towards a community that genuinely protects its members, or one that instead undermines human rights more by granting the state the power to classify, isolate, and permanently exclude certain individuals from the community. In the meantime, we need to be careful not to fall into a trap of “populist punitiveness,” in which the urge to punish overrides empirical evidence and crowds out alternative approaches to better solve the deeper social issues behind crimes.