work in tandem with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labor for a
solution to enhance the vocational training programs of the juvenile reform
schools in terms of quantity and quality, and help these students successfully
and smoothly reintegrate back into society.
76.
The Agency of Corrections has for a long time ignored the needs of female
students in reformatory education, excluded them from the correctional school
system, and placed all of them at Changhua Reform School, which has adopted
a prison-style management model. According to statistics gathered by the
Agency of Corrections, 52.3% of female student inmates are willing to take
up a vocational training program as their major in school. However, the
supplementary school attached to Changhua Reform School is their only
option, and the said school only uses a general course system. They are also
only provided study until the second year of the three years of senior high
school (year 11 of 12 years basic education). This results in that about a quarter
of the female students who resume studies after being released are set back a
grade in studies or forced to change majors. They have trouble resuming their
studies, and are thus deprived of the right to education.
77.
For students detained in the juvenile reform schools who wish to continue
study in any ordinary/vocational senior high school after release, in practice,
their applications must be negotiationed with individual schools on a case-bycase basis as the juvenile reform schools are not nationally-recognized
educational institutions. As such, multiple obstacles may then arise in the
process of negotiation. It is also common to see admission applications filed
by the said students rejected by some schools, which claim they are lacking
the resources or specialists to accept them. Therefore, these juveniles’ right to
education is undermined; this is also contrary to the spirit of the Taiwan basic
educational principles and the intent to extend the period of compulsory
education to 12 years.
Healthcare and Medicine
78.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and relevant international norms have
expressly stated that there should be no discrimination between the medical
services made available to prison inmates and community residents.
According to a Control Yuan investigation in June 2020, the ratio of inmates
detained in Taiwan’s correctional institutions to the number of medical
professionals available in the said institutions was 246:1, while the same ratio
was 91:1 among the community residents in Taiwan, a difference of 2.7 times.
This ratio is also higher than that in other countries, such as the United States.
As the said tally for correctional institutions included part-time medical
professionals, if such personnel are excluded, the actual inequality between
the medical professional services available to the inmates in the correctional
institutions and community residents is bound to be bigger. The Ministry of
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