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What is happening?
Taiwan is reopening a fundamental debate over how far the state should go in punishing serious crime. On September 30, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators announced plans to amend the Criminal Code to introduce caning, only a month after an attempt to put the issue to a national referendum was rejected by the Central Election Commission (CEC).
Under the proposal, courts could impose between three and 12 strokes as an additional punishment for offenses including aggravated sexual assault, severe child abuse, large-scale fraud, and drug-impaired driving resulting in death or serious injury.
The proposal follows an initiative launched earlier this year by KMT legislators, who argued that stronger penalties should be considered in response to serious crimes. KMT legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷), one of its main advocates, framed the issue partly around balancing offenders’ human rights with public safety and victims’ interests. The proposal eventually received the backing of all 52 KMT legislators. Following the CEC’s rejection of the proposed referendum in August, the KMT legislative caucus now intends to submit draft amendments during the current legislative session.
What is the broader picture?
The caning proposal comes at an interesting moment for Taiwan’s criminal justice system. While legislators are seeking to introduce a new form of corporal punishment, Taiwan’s constitutional institutions have simultaneously placed tighter restrictions on the state’s most severe existing punishment: the death penalty. In September 2024, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court upheld capital punishment for certain intentional homicides but narrowed the circumstances in which it can be imposed. The Court restricted the death penalty to the “most serious” cases and strengthened procedural safeguards, including requiring unanimous decisions by professional judges.
However, the ruling stopped short of abolishing capital punishment outright. In January 2025, Taiwan carried out its first execution in nearly five years, and the first one under President Lai, when Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), convicted of a rape and double murder, was executed. The decision attracted criticism from human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, which described it as a setback for human rights protections.
Taken together, these developments expose a broader tension in Taiwan’s approach to criminal justice. Constitutional jurisprudence has moved toward restricting the state’s use of irreversible punishment and strengthening procedural protections. At the same time, political pressure remains for more visible and severe forms of punishment, particularly in response to crimes that generate strong public anger.
The debate also intersects with Taiwan’s distinctive relationship with the international human rights system. Although excluded from the United Nations, Taiwan has incorporated major international human rights instruments into domestic law and voluntarily subjects their implementation to international review. In its 2026 review of Taiwan’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Review Committee called for a moratorium on executions and reaffirmed that corporal punishment constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. At the same time, the committee expressed concern over the government’s reliance on public opinion as rationale for the continued implementation of capital punishment, highlighting the tension between public support for severe punishment and Taiwan’s international human rights commitments.
Why is it important?
The controversy goes beyond whether Taiwan should introduce caning for a limited category of serious crimes, raising the question of how to protect society, address victims’ needs, and hold offenders accountable while maintaining constitutional limits on what the state itself can do.
This question takes on added significance amid concerns about recent developments in Taiwan’s human rights framework. Amnesty International has linked the caning proposal to what it describes as a wider pattern of backsliding, including cuts to human rights-related budgets, obstacles to the work of independent institutions such as the National Human Rights Commission, and challenges to the functioning of the Constitutional Court.
Against this background, the political framing of the caning debate also matters. Presenting it as a choice between offenders’ human rights and the protection of victims and the wider public risks placing these principles unnecessarily in opposition to each other. In fact, far from being at odds with one another, these positions are two sides of the same coin.