| Year |
Date |
Events |
| 2018 |
01.03 |
Organized crimes have the characteristics of gathering people to bully others, and often commit violent coercion and other criminal acts against other people, which is very harmful to society. In view of this, the Legislative Yuan amended Article 2 of the Organized Crime Prevention Act to clearly define "criminal organization" and "structured organization". The term "criminal organization" refers to a structured, permanent or profit-seeking organization formed by more than three persons involved in violence, threats, fraud, intimidation, or offenses that carry a maximum principal punishment of more than five years’ imprisonment. The term “structured organization” shall mean an organization not arbitrarily formed to commit immediate offenses, for which its name, statue, ritual, permanent location, continuous participation or work allocation of members are not required to be definite. This amendment was promulgated by the President on January 3rd, 2018. |
| |
01.08 |
Due to the advancement of science and technology, the cases of drugs and various types of crimes involving smartphones and information devices has been increasing. For the prosecutors offices in various localities to transfer the obtained digital evidence to other agencies for assistance in collecting evidence and retrieving digital data, it takes a certain amount of time and caused missed opportunities in the investigation. In order to solve this investigation bottleneck, improve the ability of criminal evidence collection, and strengthen and implement the fight against crimes, the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office established the "Plan for Taiwan High Prosecutors Office and Prosecutors Office of All Levels to Set Up Digital Evidence-Collecting Team." After submitting the plan to the Ministry of Justice, in addition to setting up a "Digital Evidence-Collecting Team" and a "Digital Evidence-Collecting Room" since January 8th, 2018, the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office also directed the prosecutors offices in Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Changhua, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Hualien to establish “Digital Evidence-Collecting Team” and be equipped with digital evidence-collecting or forensics personnel to conduct preliminary digital evidence-collecting. This was the pioneering move of the prosecutorial organ and had a great significance. |
| |
05.08 |
Jiang Hui-min took over as the Prosecutor General of the Supreme Prosecutors Office. |
| |
05.25 |
In order to specifically implement the resolution of the National Conference on Judicial Reform to "replace the names of the prosecutorial organ, and the names of the prosecutorial organ at all levels should no longer include the word "court", the prosecutors office at all levels changed their title plates in the morning of February 8th, 2018 at the same time. After the Legislative Yuan passed the amendment to add Article 114-2 in the Court Organization Act on May 8th and the President promulgated it on May 23rd, the prosecutors offices at all levels officially changed their names on May 25th to remove the word "court" and complete the relative matters related to the name change. This was the first major name-change measure since changing "prosecutors section" to “prosecutors office” and “executives of prosecutorial organ” to “chief prosecutor” on December 24th, 1989. |
| |
07.16 |
Tsai Ching-hsiang was appointed as the Minister of Justice. |
| |
08.20 |
The amendment to Article 190-1 of the Criminal Code was passed by the Legislative Yuan on May 29th, 2018, deleting the condition of “endangers public safety” for the concrete dangerous crime. It was promulgated by the President on June 13th, 2018. In order to respond to and solve problems arising after the amendment and establish the principle of enforcing against environmental crimes to enhance the effectiveness of handling environmental crime cases, the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office and the Environmental Protection Administration of the Executive Yuan jointly held a seminar on "Applicable Environmental Protection Laws after the Amendment of Article 190-1 of the Criminal Code" on August 20th, 2018 and subsequently established the "Principles for Application of Article 190-1 of the Criminal Code" as the basis for the prosecutors, polices and environmental protection agencies to investigate environmental crimes. |
