Exploring sources of public attitudes toward capital punishment in Taiwan
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Exploring sources of public attitudes toward capital punishment in Taiwan Liqun Cao 1
& Yung-Lien
Lai 2 & Chia-Chen Huang 2
# Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Capital punishment policy deserves a more prominent place in the analysis of the politics of Taiwan. While Taiwan’s political culture is on a par with the mainstream of the world’s democratic politics, its public opinion on capital crime policy is underresearched. This study begins with an historical review of capital punishment in Taiwan. After that, we turn to an in-depth analysis of data from a random survey in Taipei and New Taipei, focusing on the government’s retentionist policy rather than an exploration of general attitudes toward the death penalty. Results indicate that support for death penalty policy and for the Ministry of Justice’s execution policy stems mainly from instrumental sources: Belief in the deterrent effect of capital sentences and faith in a “tough on crime” approach as a generic cure for crime. In contrast, those who believe in the efficacy of rehabilitation tend to oppose capital punishment policy. Unexpectedly, experience with crime victimization and perception of high crime levels in one’s residential neighborhood reduce support for capital punishment policy. We end our analysis with a call to political leaders to exercise enlightened leadership on the death sentence policy.
* Liqun Cao [email protected] Yung-Lien Lai [email protected] Chia-Chen Huang [email protected]
1
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Ontario Tech University, 55 Bond Street East, Oshawa, ON, Canada
2
Department of Crime Prevention and Corrections, Central Police University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan 33304
Cao L. et al.
Introduction Two separate but intertwined questions give rise to this timely study: (1) Why has Taiwan failed to follow most other democratic countries in the abolition of the death penalty? and (2) What are the sources of continuing public support for capital punishment policy in Taiwan? When Taiwan began its democratic transition in 1988, it was broadly assumed in the West that Taiwan would in due course act to modify its punishment regime by abolishing capital sentences. After all, the death penalty might quite reasonably be viewed as an historical relic of the long-gone revolutionary origins of the Kuomintang (Guomindang or KMT). The practice of capital punishment is to be found in mainland jurisprudential roots, and from the former Soviet Union where the so-called anti-revolutionaries were believed to be best dealt with by expeditious sentencing to death at the hands of the state [1]. However, such an expected and outwardly logical development has not taken place in Taiwan [2, 3]. During the celebrated “democratic transition” in Taiwan, crime rates increased rather precipitously, reaching historically unprecedented levels [4]. As a direct response, increasing numbers of executions followed each year from 1988 up to 1992. The ruling political party Kuomintang used the existence of increasing crime rates to bolster its po
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