EATS Young Scholar Awards – Pei-Ying Wang

Why Do Young People Call Correctional Officers ‘Father’?

Youth Confinement and Relational Governance in Taiwan

Pei-Ying Wang

Beyond Punishment

Why do some young people describe uniformed correctional officers as fathers?

Why do former students continue to return long after their release?

During twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Taiwanese correctional school, I repeatedly encountered these questions, which became central to my understanding of youth confinement in Taiwan.

My research examines what I describe as relational governance: a form of authority that operates not primarily through coercion, punishment, or bureaucratic procedures, but through everyday interactions between staff and young people. While relationships matter in many youth justice settings, the Taiwanese case reveals how care and discipline become closely intertwined in everyday institutional life.

Between September 2022 and September 2023, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a correctional school housing approximately 150 young men. Through participant observation, interviews with 25 young people and 8 staff, and analysis of historical and policy documents, I explored how people experienced everyday life inside the institution. Staff included teachers, social workers, and class instructors (jiàodǎoyuán, 教導員). Employed by the correctional system, class instructors are uniformed correctional officers responsible for security and discipline, while also mentoring and supporting young people.

At first glance, the institution resembles a prison more than a school. Most students have shaved heads, wear identical uniforms, and pass through multiple locked iron gates each day. Their daily lives are structured by strict routines, and movement around the campus is carefully controlled, with young people escorted from one area to another by staff.

Yet these visible forms of control tell only part of the story. To understand how everyday life operates within the school, it is necessary to look beyond walls, gates, and rules, and examine the relationships that shape young people’s experiences of confinement.

Governing Through Relationships

Relational governance became visible through the ways staff described their work. As one teacher explained, ‘If you cannot manage them, you cannot teach them.’ Authority remained important, yet staff repeatedly emphasised that rules and discipline alone were rarely sufficient. Much of their work involved talking with young people, resolving conflicts, encouraging small achievements, and helping students navigate personal difficulties.

Staff explained that adolescents were more willing to accept guidance when they felt genuinely cared for. As one class instructor put it, effective management relied on yǐ róu kè gāng (以柔克剛), ‘using softness to overcome hardness’. One teacher described the need to maintain a ‘psychological grey zone’, in which students experienced care while remaining aware of the teacher’s authority. Students wanted teachers’ approval and did not wish to disappoint them, but they also understood that consequences could follow misconduct. Relationships therefore operated through a carefully maintained balance between care and constraint.

These connections often extended beyond formal institutional roles. Many young people described class instructors as fathers or older brothers, and teachers as mothers or older sisters. Familial language appeared repeatedly in young people’s descriptions of institutional life. Several former students continued to return to the school after release, visiting teachers and seeking advice. The significance of these connections therefore extended well beyond confinement itself.

Learning Through Relationships

Young people often interpreted their experiences through their own moral vocabulary. Many spoke about zuò rén (做人), a phrase that carries two related meanings. One refers to ‘starting over’, becoming a better person and leaving behind a troubled past. The other refers to learning how to conduct oneself in relationships, understanding social expectations, and interacting appropriately with others.

A closely related expression was kàn liǎnsè (看臉色), literally ‘reading faces’. Young people used this phrase to describe recognising other people’s emotions, expectations, and social positions, and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly. This involved knowing when to speak, when to remain silent, and how to avoid conflict.

For many, confinement provided an unusual environment in which these lessons became unavoidable. Outside the institution, conflicts could often be escaped by changing friendship groups or walking away. Inside correctional school, however, young people lived and studied within stable groups. Students remained with the same classmates, teachers, and class instructors for extended periods while also sharing dormitories and daily routines. The inability to withdraw from difficult relationships meant that they were continually required to negotiate tensions, repair conflicts, and adapt to others. It was through these everyday interactions that many described learning what it meant to zuò rén and kàn liǎnsè.

A Layered System of Governance

The significance of relational governance becomes clearer when situated within Taiwan’s broader historical context. Contemporary correctional schools are shaped by multiple historical influences, including Japanese colonial rule, authoritarian governance under the Kuomintang, democratisation, and more recent children’s rights reforms.

As a result, different approaches to governing young people exist side by side within the same institution. Daily routines still bear traces of military discipline, including marching, collective drills, and highly structured schedules, while counselling services, educational programmes, and rights-based frameworks reflect later reforms. Instead of replacing one another, these different traditions have accumulated over time.

Why Taiwan Matters

My research suggests that youth confinement in Taiwan cannot be understood solely through punishment, welfare, or rights. Instead, it draws attention to the relationships through which institutional life is organised and experienced.

By examining this often overlooked corner of Taiwanese society, the project contributes to wider discussions of youth justice and social change. More broadly, it challenges assumptions that care and control operate as separate domains. In Taiwan’s correctional schools, both are often exercised through the same relationships, creating forms of authority that are simultaneously supportive and disciplinary. At the same time, the Taiwanese case highlights the importance of understanding rehabilitation within its historical and cultural context. Rather than following a single universal model, rehabilitation is shaped by the particular histories, cultures, and institutions within which it is practised. Attending to these experiences offers a distinctive perspective on youth confinement, and helps explain why, in a place that resembles a prison, so many young people speak of family.