Taiwan Judicial Reform and Preventive Detention

30-second overview: On April 17, 2026, the Legislative Yuan passed a third-reading amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, adding drunk driving causing death or injury and child sexual exploitation to the scope of preventive detention. When this system was introduced in 1997 as a "last resort," it was limited to a handful of serious crimes; 29 years later it has gradually become a routine tool. The impetus for expansion came from the explosion in child sexual exploitation cases from 1,213 cases in 2019 to 3,354 cases in 2023¹; opposing voices have pointed out that this may erode the constitutional baseline of the presumption of innocence². Simultaneously in 2025, the Legislative Yuan also amended the Court Organization Act to allow victims to petition to view deliberation records after verdict. The center of gravity in the judiciary is quietly shifting from "procedural protections for offenders" toward "victims' right to know."³

A Legislative Act That Seems Contradictory

On April 17, 2026, the Legislative Yuan did something that reads as contradictory.

In the same session, legislators on one hand passed a third-reading amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, expanding the scope of "preventive detention" to include more types of offenses — that is, the ability to detain defendants before a court conviction — while on the other hand, a Court Organization Act amendment passed in the same session allowed victims to petition to view judges' "deliberation records" explaining the reasoning behind verdicts after cases are finalized.³

On one side, expanding the state's power to strip defendants of their personal freedom before trial; on the other, giving victims who previously knew nothing about the reasoning behind verdicts the right, for the first time, to see the internal deliberation process of the judiciary.

These two amendments were reported side by side in the same news cycle, and outside observers at first found it difficult to judge which direction Taiwan's judicial reform was actually heading.⁴ But viewed over a longer timeframe, both actually point toward the same thing — the center of gravity in Taiwan's judiciary is quietly shifting from a system centered on procedural protections for offenders to one in which victims' experiences and social defense are given equal weight.

This article attempts to answer: What is preventive detention? Why this particular reform in 2026? What costs does this reform carry?

From 1997 to 2026: Twenty-Nine Years of Preventive Detention

Originally a "Measure of Last Resort"

Taiwan's preventive detention system was added by an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure on December 19, 1997 (adding Article 101-1).⁵ The legislative intent at the time was clear: the purpose of detention is to preserve the criminal proceedings (preventing flight, preventing evidence tampering, preventing evidence destruction) — not to punish defendants before a verdict.

But certain crimes (the drafters had in mind sexual assault and kidnapping for ransom at the time) carry a high risk of reoffending; if defendants were allowed to return to the community, they would pose an immediate threat to the public. Preventive detention was designed as a last resort for these special circumstances.

This is the system that English common law calls "preventive detention" and German law calls "Sicherungsverwahrung" (custody for public safety). When it entered Taiwan's Code of Criminal Procedure in 1997, it came with quite strict conditions.

How Many Times Has It Been Expanded in Twenty-Nine Years?

Over the nearly 30 years since, this article has undergone six rounds of amendment: 1999, 2002, 2006, 2018, 2020, and 2026.⁵ With each amendment, the offenses covered have only increased, never decreased.

Key moments:

• December 17, 2018: The Legislative Yuan passed a third-reading amendment adding "serious crimes with a high rate of reoffending, crimes violating bodily autonomy or sexual self-determination, and aggravated fraud" to the scope of preventive detention. Sexual harassment was formally included for the first time.⁶
• April 17, 2026: Another third-reading amendment, in the context of the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act and the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act amendments, further added drunk driving causing death or injury and child sexual exploitation, while also adding provisions allowing courts to notify authorities to cancel the passports of fleeing defendants.⁷

This article, originally reserved as a "last resort measure," now covers a wide range of situations including drunk driving, sexual offenses, fraud, child sexual exploitation, hijacking of transportation, drug manufacture and trafficking, and more.

Why This Particular Reform in 2026

The Numbers on Child Sexual Exploitation Cases

One clear driver of this round of legislative reform was the explosive growth in child sexual exploitation cases.

Data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare shows that child sexual exploitation cases grew from 1,213 cases in 2019 to 2,282 cases in 2022, and then to 3,354 cases in 2023. Victims under 12 years old account for approximately one-tenth of cases; over 70% of contact routes were communication software and social media platforms.¹

Around 2023, the case of internet celebrity "Xiao Yu" involving deepfake face-swap sexual imagery brought this new form of harm to minors into public consciousness.¹ That same year-end, the government promoted the "four anti-sexual-violence laws" (including amendments to the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act and the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act), creating a "sexual imagery removal and takedown mechanism" and a "community supervision mechanism for perpetrators."¹

The April 17, 2026 amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure can be seen as a continuation of this wave of reform: since new substantive law has already strengthened the handling of offenders, procedural law must keep pace — allowing prosecutors and police to detain suspects with a high risk of reoffending during the investigation phase.

The Judicial Yuan's Legislative Rationale

In the resolution documents of its 216th plenary session in September 2025, the Judicial Yuan provided the following explanation for expanding preventive detention: "Considering the emerging types of crime and the increasing trend of related cases, and in coordination with the provisions of the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act and other regulations, amending the scope of application for preventive detention."⁸

Plain translation: New types of crimes have emerged in society (fraud and child sexual exploitation are two typical examples), the existing procedural tools are insufficient, and expansion is necessary.

The Ministry of Justice, on another occasion, expressed the same thinking: "The current Code of Criminal Procedure contains no alternative measures that would both avoid detaining defendants and also prevent evidence tampering; if this provision were removed, it would affect the ability to trace upstream co-conspirators."⁹

For the Judicial Yuan and Ministry of Justice, preventive detention and detention to prevent evidence tampering are necessary tools for the state's prosecution of crimes; expanding or retaining these grounds is the minimum necessary means for the criminal justice system to respond to emerging threats.

The Opposing Voices: When "Prevention" Swallows "Presumption"

The Judicial Reform Foundation's Seven Core Demands

The Judicial Reform Foundation (hereafter JRF) is the institution that has most systematically articulated opposition in this debate. They have a longstanding list of reform positions on the detention system, including:²

1. When bailed defendants tamper with evidence or commit perjury, their bail should be forfeited
2. Appeals of detention orders should be decided independently by a higher court
3. Detention proceedings during trial should be initiated by the prosecutor's motion
4. "Risk of evidence tampering" should be limited to the investigation phase only
5. Clearly regulate the period and upper limits of alternative measures to detention
6. Reduce late-night detention hearings to avoid exhaustion-based adjudication
7. The threshold for detention in serious crime cases should revert to the standard for ordinary detention, eliminating Article 101, Paragraph 1, Item 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure

The seventh point is what they consider the most fundamental problem: current law allows judges to apply "reasonable grounds" (a lower standard than "concrete specific grounds") to determine that a defendant in a serious crime case poses a flight or evidence-tampering risk and can therefore be detained. The JRF argues that this lowered threshold "lacks legitimacy" and effectively makes defendants in serious crime cases subject to pre-trial imprisonment.²

"Do Not Play Politics with the Judiciary"

When the Taiwan People's Party caucus proposed deleting the "evidence tampering" grounds in August 2025, the JRF published a commentary criticizing the quality of this proposal:¹⁰

The commentary also emphasized one point: preventive detention is not unique to Taiwan. "The legal systems of Germany, Japan, the United States, and other countries all retain similar grounds for detention; Taiwan's current rules have legitimacy under international law." The JRF is not calling for abolishing the system — it is calling for returning the system to its appropriate rigor.¹⁰

Where Is the Baseline of the Presumption of Innocence?

The core argument against expansion has always been the constitutional principle of the presumption of innocence. Both the Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights expressly provide that before a court's final judgment, any person shall be presumed innocent.¹¹

Preventive detention by definition challenges this principle: it strips defendants of their personal freedom before a verdict. When it was introduced in 1997, this was viewed as an exception to an exception, to be applied with strict conditions; but as the covered offenses have expanded time and again, the exception has increasingly come to look like the norm.

The JRF's question is: when preventive detention shifts from "exception" to "routine," does the baseline of the presumption of innocence still exist?

The Other Axis: The Victims' Rights Movement

From 1999 to 2026

While criminal procedure law was moving in the direction of "strengthening state investigative tools," another axis of reform was also accelerating in the 2020s: the status and right to information of victims in criminal proceedings.

In January 1999, the Crime Victim Protection Act was passed, and the Crime Victim Protection Foundation was simultaneously established. Over the 26 years since its founding, this organization has handled over 61,000 cases and served more than 1.74 million people.¹²

In January 2023, the Crime Victim Protection Act was amended to incorporate the longstanding demands of the "Civil Alliance for Crime Victim Rights Protection" (including rationalized budgets, staffing, and compensation levels) into formal institutional structure.¹²

Court Transparency and Review of Deliberations in 2025

On June 27, 2025, the Legislative Yuan passed a third-reading amendment to the Court Organization Act, with two new mechanisms directly changing the position of victims in criminal proceedings:³

1. Tiered court broadcasting: Law review (Supreme Court, Grand Chamber) is in principle public, with exceptions for non-public; fact-finding review (district court, high court) is in principle non-public, with exceptions for public.
2. Victim review of deliberations: "Parties to the case, litigation representatives, defense counsel, or former assistant counsel may, after the judgment becomes final, petition to review the deliberation records. However, transcription, photography, and photocopying are not permitted."³

Previously, court "deliberations" were conducted behind closed doors — how judges discussed the case, which justice advocated for a lighter sentence, which advocated for a heavier one, none of this was visible to the outside world, including the parties to the case themselves. The 2025 amendment allows victims, for the first time, to go to the court after a judgment becomes final and view the discussion records behind that judgment.

This amendment actually faced significant controversy during the legislative process. The Democratic Progressive Party opposed the court broadcasting provision, arguing that "forcing court broadcasting despite unanimous opposition from prosecutors, defense, and legal scholars" would harm the fairness of adjudication; but with the Kuomintang and Taiwan People's Party enjoying a majority, the amendment still passed.³

Two Axes Pointing to the Same New Principle

The 2025 Court Organization Act amendment and the 2026 Code of Criminal Procedure amendment together reveal the direction of Taiwan's judicial reform over these two years: victims should not be ignored by the black box of judicial proceedings.

But this victim-centered turn carries an uncomfortable cost: it provides a moral foundation for expanding preventive detention. When "protecting children from secondary trauma" becomes the legitimate reason for legislative reform, strengthening the state's pre-trial coercive measures (detention) for such cases is harder than ever to challenge.

This is also where the contradiction in judicial reform lies.

How Other Countries Handle This

Japan: "Hostage Justice" Under a 23-Day Limit

Japanese criminal procedure law stipulates that pre-indictment detention (which they call "goryuu") has a maximum of 23 days. But in practice, prosecutors can effectively exceed this limit by splitting charges or making multiple arrests.¹³

The United Nations Human Rights Committee and Human Rights Watch have long criticized Japan's system under the name "hostage justice." During long pre-trial detention periods, prosecutors use the promise of release in exchange for a confession, effectively coercing defendants into confessing even if they may be innocent.¹³

Japan's late 2023 reform unifying the "imprisonment" system (implemented June 2025) merged punitive and penal imprisonment systems, emphasizing rehabilitation over pure punishment. But the "goryuu" system itself has not yet been fundamentally reformed.¹³

The United States: From Bail to Risk Assessment

The U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to bail. But the federal Bail Reform Act of 1984 introduced preventive detention provisions: for defendants deemed "dangerous to the community," bail may be denied.¹¹

In practice this system produced profound inequity: low-income defendants, unable to pay high bail amounts, were detained; wealthy defendants easily obtained bail. The result was indefinitely pre-trial detained low-income individuals effectively punished before trial.

Starting in 2019, New York State promoted reform, introducing a "risk assessment tool" to replace fixed bail amounts, attempting to reduce the number of people compelled into detention due to poverty.¹¹

Germany: A Complete System of Tiered Alternative Measures

Germany's Code of Criminal Procedure Article 116 establishes a complete system of alternative measures to detention:¹⁴

• Defendants detained for flight risk → alternative measures may include periodic reporting, prohibition from leaving residence
• Defendants detained for evidence tampering risk → alternative measures may include prohibition from contacting witnesses
• Preventive detention (reoffending risk) defendants → alternative measures may include community supervision, psychological treatment

The historical trajectory of this system actually parallels Taiwan's quite closely: in the 1950s the "reoffending risk" grounds initially only applied to specific sexual offenses; after August 1972 they expanded to a range of serious crimes. German legal scholarship directly acknowledges that pre-trial detention "has become a composite tool with both punitive and crime prevention purposes," oscillating between "ensuring proceedings proceed" and "suppressing crime preventively."¹⁴

Taiwan's Position

After comparing three countries, Taiwan's position is clear:

• Better than Japan: at least no practice of extended split-charge detention in the "hostage justice" style
• Better than the United States: no structural problem of detention due to poverty
• But still some distance from Germany: Germany pairs each type of detention ground with clear alternative measures; Taiwan's alternative measure regulations remain insufficiently detailed (also the fifth point in the JRF's longstanding demands)²

Preventive detention is a difficult problem in all countries. No democratic country has completely abandoned this tool, but every country has struggled to find its own balance point between "protecting society" and "protecting human rights." Taiwan is walking this road, and the April 17, 2026 amendment is yet another shift of the balance weight toward the "protecting society" side.

The Road After Ten Years of Judicial Reform

In August 2017, the Presidential Office convened the National Conference on Judicial Reform — the largest gathering of public opinion on Taiwan's modern judicial history. That conference produced dozens of resolutions, including citizen participation in trials (later becoming the Citizen Judges system), abolition of rules violating fair trial principles, and strengthened victim protection.¹⁵

Looking back nine years later, the commitments of the National Conference on Judicial Reform have been partially fulfilled: the Citizen Judges system formally launched in 2023, the Crime Victim Protection Act was amended in 2023, and the Court Organization Act introduced court transparency and review of deliberations in 2025.

But preventive detention now covers more offenses than it did nine years ago. This was not something the National Conference opposed, but it was also not quite the direction the Conference was pushing.

When preventive detention shifts from "exception" to "routine," does the baseline of the presumption of innocence still exist? Taiwan's answer to this question is not yet written.

April 17, 2026 is one waypoint, not the endpoint.

The next time the Legislative Yuan expands this article — whether to combat the next wave of fraud, the next wave of cryptocurrency crime, or the next generation of new harms on emerging social media platforms — this question will be asked again. The next ten years of Taiwan's judiciary will take shape through repeated answers to this question.

Further Reading

• Taiwan Democratic System — whether the expansion of preventive detention is ultimately a collective judgment by a democratic society on "state power vs. individual freedom"
• Human Rights and Gender Equality — including child sexual exploitation and sexual harassment in preventive detention is part of the gender-based violence prevention movement
• Taiwan's Controversy over Veterinary Drug Use — another form of "institutional transparency" issue, showing the tension in Taiwan's governance between expertise and democracy

References