The Ministry of National Defense Taiyuan Discipline Prison, known as Taiyuan Prison, was one of the major lockup locations to confine insurgent criminals back in Taiwan’s White Terror period. The prison was situated in No.32, Bei-Yuan Village, Tung-He Town, Taitung County. It was commissioned to operate in 1962. In 1970, after the Taiyuan Incident took place, the Ministry of National Defense had since then imprisoned the insurgent criminals together in Green Island. In 1973, the Taiyuan Prison had stopped confining political criminals and had shifted to manage regular, military criminals. They changed the name of the place to the Ministry of National Defense Taiyuan Prison. After decades of changes, it is now known as the Ministry of Justice Agency of Corrections Taiyuan Prison.
History
editIn 1953, Taitung County, Green Island Town’s Taiwan Province National Security Council New Life Correction Center was where the “Prison Re-Insurgent Incident” took place, involving Chen Hua and many others. In the Ministry of National Defense’s report, considering that the New Life Correction Center was a shelter for political criminals of the three categories: Insurgence, Reform, and Bandits, the Ministry therefore proposed that the officials should be establishing a specialized prison for “insurgent criminals.” The said proposal was approved by the President in April, 1957. After further investigation and planning, the Ministry reported to the President in August, 1960 that, considering Taitung County, Tung-He Town, Taiyuan Village’s public land were surrounded by the embrace of multiple mountains, and that there was one sole tunnel connecting to the outside world, forming an isolating space, therefore was suitable to establish such specialized prison. In September 1960, the Presidential Hall had agreed to have the military start its construction based on the Ministry of National Defense’s proposal, and in 1962, the prison was officially put into use. Starting from March 1st, 1963, the Ministry of National Defense officially started structuring a temporary crew of officers for the Taiyuan Discipline Prison, and had officially established the institution on May 16th. In February 1963, they had officialized the temporary team, supervised by the Ministry of National Defense Military Justice Department. The Official warden of the Taiyuan Discipline Prison was granted the Major-General honor.
In 1962, after the establishment of Taiyuan Prison, the Ministry of National Defense proposed “Implementation for Transferring Insurgent Prisoners to Military Prison”, first receiving 500 new lives from the New Life Correction Center. As for the rest of the 343 new lives, they were transported to a military prison. In July, when the construction of Taiyuan prison was finalized, they started to accept criminals in August. The process of migration from the New Life Correction Center had been going on all the way until June, 1966, by then most of the “rebellious criminals” had already been moved to a new place. In February, 1970, the Taiyuan Incident took place, which involved political criminals such as Jiang Bing-Hsing and more, who snatched weapons away from the military guards and advocated for Taiwan’s independence. After the incident, the Ministry of National Defense had filed a report for reflection and had proposed a few policies to help with policy improvement. The policies were to congregate all “insurgent criminals” to Green Island for further discipline. In the meanwhile, the Presidential Hall had officially approved in July to transfer the second and third stage of construction funding for Taiyuan Discipline Prison to establish a new Green Island Prison instead. In 1972, the Green Island Discipline Prison was constructed. On April 23rd, the military officials moved 170 political criminals from Taiyuan Discipline Prison to Green Island; on September, 1973, the Ministry of National Defense converted the Taiyuan Discipline Prison to a regular military prison. On October 16th, they officially changed the name to Ministry of National Defense Taiyuan Prison, formally ending the mission of taking political criminals into custody. In 1974, the Ministry once again moved the Taiyuan Prison to Tainan and changed its name to Ministry of National Defense Tainan Prison. After several migrations, the place is now known as the Ministry of Justice, Agency of Corrections Taiyuan Vocational Training Center.
Structure and Management
editAccording to the official structure and management in 1963, Taiyuan Discipline Prison was equipped with official prison warden and vice-warden, and under their management, there were Political Strategy department, First Section, Second Section, infirmary, radio station, and more. The Political Strategy department was responsible for thought control, and the political officials were primarily in charge of thought education, which organized a day of thought education program once every week for the political criminals. The guardians were to supervise the criminals’ behaviors and record every single move in the prison cells in order to maintain the overall security. At the same time, criminals were allowed to submit their written works to make money, but every single file needed to go through the guardians for close inspection. The First Section is Administration, responsible for regular administrative matters. The production team was managed by the First Section, and within the Section, there were Section Leader, Prison Officer, Personnel Officer, Administrative Officer, Clerical Officer, Data Management Officer, Manager Substitute Officer, Financial Officer, 13 sergeants, and 4 soldiers. The Second Section took charge in managing the prison cells, having 5 Prison Officers getting full grasp of every single criminals’ data and background information. When needed, together with 30 guardians, they had to inspect the cells to check if anyone had kept knives, weapons, or anything else that was prohibited in their spaces to ensure security. The infirmary consisted of Manager, Military Medical Officer, and Dentist Officers. The medical staff were a total of 4 sergeants with different medical specialties. At the radio station, there was a Radio Communications Officer and a Radio Maintenance Officer. Moreover, to ensure the security of the Prison’s surroundings, the officials had assigned troops to take turns guarding different spots. Each outpost was guarded by 2 guards, which were mostly Taiwanese soldiers who were serving on compulsory military service.
The Taiyuan Prison was divided into Ren Prison and Yi Prison, within which two sides of the corridor were lined up with a total of more than 20 prison cells. Out-of-prison labor cells were among the 3-5 rooms at the very front, and the rest at the back were regular cells. The main difference between both was that the out-of-prison labor cells were free to come in and out. At the beginning of the Prison management, things were more relaxed, except for those sentenced to life imprisonment were unable to do physical labors out-of-prison, the rest of the prisoners were able to apply for opportunities as such. For out-of-prison labor, there was a divide between working outside or inside of the prison wall. The inside labor included planting vegetables at the farm, distributing medications at the infirmary; as for the outside labor, it included chopping woods in the mountain, planting trees, and keeping swines, etc. The prisoners were usually led by a few supervisors and were taken back to the prison in the afternoon. Both criminals at the Taiyuan Prison and at the New Life Correction Center had to receive the same political education. The only difference was that the Taiyuan Prison required group discussion to take place only once a week, dividing the criminals into Advanced, Intermediate, and Beginner levels. The criminals were told to express their opinions through different assigned topics. In the meanwhile, the prisoners weren’t divided by their provincial citizenship, but rather by their political stances––Taiwanese Independent Democracy Party and Communist Party, and these parties were often in conflict with each other in the prison.