On March 13, 2019, altogether ten court judges and national judges including the Division-Chief Judge of the Juvenile and Family Court in Nonthaburi of Thailand, Tritipan Chaibang, visited the Taipei Juvenile Detention House, Agency of Corrections and learned about the correction system in Taiwan. They were accompanied by the Deputy Director of Planning Division, Yu Shu-Hua and the Specialist Chen Yu-Heng, the Principal of Taipei Juvenile Detention House Chang Long-Chang and the superiors of other sections and offices.

When they were visiting all our facilities, the Taipei Juvenile Detention House also specially introduced the juvenile transition and linkage systems in recent years. The foreign guests appreciated that although we had only limited manpower, we kept working hard to look for external resources and cooperating with many foundations and other government ministries (such as the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Health and Welfare) to look forward to providing the juvenile more education and care so that they could change and grow in the Juvenile Detention House.

During this visiting, the delegation also made a brief introduction to us about the Thai juvenile court system, in which there are two formal judges, and the court also values the opinions of non-governmental experts. Therefore, during the trial of juvenile delinquency or illegal cases, there must be two non-governmental experts involved (i.e. so called-national judge system) and they need to determine together with the two formal judges whether the juvenile is guilty or not and whether it is necessary to send him or her to enter the correctional facilities or to have him or her taken over by other social welfare units. The background of the national judges includes legal experts (lawyers), university professors, scholars, doctors, social workers, etc. Besides, in order to emphasize the gender equality, there will be at least one woman either in the official or the national judges, which will form a four-person team consisting of two men and two women who will jointly examine the juvenile trial. If they could not reach agreement together, they would not stop negotiating until a consensus has been reached. So official judges won't have absolute power to lead the judgment, which shows that Thailand appreciates the development and interests of the juvenile very much and looks forward to giving the juvenile best treatment through various professional opinions.

The Thai national judges also work as a juvenile probation officer who will also provide the court for reference about the assistance in society and the intervention policy or juveniles. It is worth mentioning that the soldiers have a dominant position in Thailand, so for the juvenile transition and linkage, in addition to the involvement of the Foundation, the military units sometimes will take over these juvenile offenders so that they could help the juveniles walk on the right path through the scout education. Their performance in the Juvenile Detention House will also be taken into consideration by courts.

Although the national conditions of Thailand and Taiwan are slightly different, both countries are affirmed that reducing one juvenile offender today will reduce an adult offender tomorrow; moreover juveniles are the future assets of the country, so we two countries both have recognized that more resources should be invested in the juvenile correctional education to help the teenager walk from the wrong path back to the right one.