This thesis is discussing how the police offences during the Japanese Rule period shaped the modern life order by the police and summary Judgement. The crime of police offences is very closely related to the life of the common people and based on the norm set by the imagination of the civilized life order.
The police offences are not vicious and serious crimes, but the assumption of a civilized and progressive life. It regards individual as the subject of modern legal life, based on the value standard of civilization and rationality. In order to enable people to achieve this value standard, corresponding restrictions, prohibitions and punishments in the aspects of the physical behavior; the ways of interactions between people; the social interaction between individuals and the public; the relationship between people and public and private spaces; the transportation and the human-nature relationship.
When the police offence was first adopted to Taiwan by the Japanese, its scope is defined by the illegal behaviors and the punishments are detentions or small fines. The police offenses included the police offenses of the old Japanese Criminal Code, the police offenses of local counties, and various administrative rules concerning daily life. The content includes all-encompassing, and combines with a summary judgement system, that the police can report and punish those crimes by themselves. In 1908, due to the changes in the legal system resulted from the implementation of the new Penal Code of Japan, Government of Taiwan enacted the Taiwan Police Offence. The concept and scope of police offences converged to Taiwan Police Offence Law. The content of the norms included prototypes inherited from the colonial mother country and some provisions that are attempted to solve the problems of Taiwan’s local rule. This will be the main topic of this thesis.
In Japanese colonial period, Taiwan’s police are deployed in a decentralized manner and maintained a high-density police force with high police visibility. Although the intensity of suppression varies geographically, the visibility coupled with regular patrols and ad hoc operations, overall has the ability to effect the daily life of people in urban and non-urban areas. When public security in plain areas was under control, the number of police offence crimes began to rise in 1901, and slightly declined in the first half of 1910. As the intensity of the suppression continues to grow. The number of police offence crimes reached a peak in 1936. The enforcement intensity of the police offences in Taiwan is higher than in Japan and Korea.
As far as changes in daily life are concerned, the police offences is promoted in a prohibitive rather than inductive way through the police and summary judgement. Moreover, because Taiwan as the colony of Japanese, there is a lot of abuse in the interpretation, application and enforcement of police offences by the police. This can be confirmed by the analysis of the cases appealing to the court for formal judgments. In addition, ethnic differential treatment that inevitably appears during law enforcement affects the effectiveness of summary judgement of police offence. The police offences and the summary judgement can only change people’s external behavior temporarily and has not yet fully deepened their inner morality. However, from the external observation of mainland Chinese people after World War II, the publicity and hygiene of Taiwanese society under Japanese rule has been improved to a certain extent.
However, promoting a modern order of life through the police has its limits and restrictions. Taiwan Police Offence Law is not only “over-disciplined” but also colonial. Under the shadow of police politics, the police offences has also been used to demonstrate administrative authority and to promote administrative works. From the 1920s, it was used to suppress the political life of Taiwanese, which in turn made Taiwanese resented. The modernity of the police offences was blurred.