Note: I have ZERO interest in doing any sort of criminal justice or law enforcement work anywhere, this is purely discussion.
With that out of the way, I learned some things about the hiring process for criminal justice related jobs in the US. Often this involves volunteering, getting experience by working as private security, loss prevention, military enlistment, etc. and going to a job interview, and once given a conditional offer then you got background checks, investigation, polygraph, etc. before you go off to police academy. Lots of advise on what various types of jobs require (police often have low educational requirement, but very strict criminal history requirements, need a lot of prior experience, standard varies with different departments, etc., while law has extremely high educational requirement but a bit looser as far as criminal history goes, with private security being the most lax allowing even convicted felons to work in it). So given all this, I’ve decided to look up what it takes to work in criminal justice job in Taiwan and what I find is 100% different from the way it’s done in the US.
Except for private security, it seems all criminal justice related job STARTS with exams. Out of high school you take exams for police university, for the judicial yuan if you want to be a prosecutor/judge/whatever, then there’s also a level 3 and 4 “special exam” if you are going into the police force outside of the police university. Level 3 requires a college degree and is required if you want to be sergeant/lieutenant/captain or whatever. Level 4 doesn’t let you become police sergeants or whatever but only requires a high school diploma. If going for police university, you can choose from various areas from general police work, to corrections, court security, victims service, forensics, etc… But essentially everything criminal justice related in Taiwan starts with that exam. It’s not really that easy from what I can glean. There is another way besides the police university which is called “special exam” and it seems criminal history is not necessarily a disqualifier from being an officer if you get in this way. (at least according to this: 警察特考內軌外軌及警察三等四等差別？現行警察考試制度簡介-公職王 there’s very few crimes that absolutely disqualifies (essentially only treason, sedition, corruption related offenses, and your civil rights have not been suspended currently) you from law enforcement if you go outside of the police university route). However for police university, having ANY criminal record is a disqualifier. Oh and there’s age limits too, must be under 25 if you want to do police university, and must be under 37 if you are doing special exams. Aside from their BMI requirement, one requirement they have is that you CANNOT have any tattoo, if you have any it must be removed. (American cops often have tattoos)
Once you meet the admission cutoff for the exam, then it’s interviews, except the interview is only to see if you’re fit for duty and is a pass/fail thing, not competitive at all. Then there’s medical exams, background investigations, etc (but I do not hear any polygraph testing requirement at all), psych, etc.
The training is 4 years at the police university, 2 years if you’re getting in through the “special exam” pipeline. No experience apart from passing that test is necessary, in fact military experience is not even helpful (explains why cops here aren’t trigger happy).
If you do get accepted into the police university or pass the special exam, you can serve in the alternative service instead of military.
It seems for the US the advise is start volunteering and study whatever, and brush up on interview skill and all that. For Taiwan it seems prudent to start young and study like you never studied before. In the US they want to see experience and runs all sorts of checks, in addition to criminal they also do credit checks and all that. In Taiwan they just conduct a background check but don’t care about your credit.
Question: Has anyone gone through, or knows someone who’s gone through police academy in Taiwan? What is it like? Is the training very strict? From the sources I seen, they only require a 1200 meter run which is like much less than FBI’s 1.5 mile run.