Opinion: The 75-Yuan Latte and a Rice Cooker: The Greatest Risk in Justice Isn't Wrongful Conviction, But Risk Management Failure

If someone were to ask, 'What case best represents the current state of Taiwan's judiciary in recent years?' It would not be the fraud rings involving tens of millions of dollars, cross-border money laundering, drug trafficking, or gang violence. Instead, it would be a 75-yuan oat milk latte and a rice cooker that once made headlines.

A convenience store clerk, after working 18 consecutive hours, forgot to pay for a 75-yuan latte they had brewed for themselves. As a result, they went through police questioning, investigation, prosecution, and a first-instance guilty verdict. It was only in the second trial that they were acquitted. The High Court, in a rare obiter dictum, reminded employers, prosecutors, and the lower court that criminal law should not lightly intervene in matters that could be handled through corporate management or labor systems.

This case recalls the earlier 'rice cooker incident.' Though the facts differ, both cases reflect a more troubling phenomenon: the judicial system is increasingly陷入 a state of imbalance—major cases are hard to resolve, while minor ones are treated with excessive severity.

What truly needs scrutiny is not individual judges or prosecutors, but the entire judiciary's risk management logic.

All modern governments emphasize risk management. Police use crime hotspot analysis, fire departments classify fire risks, financial institutions conduct anti-money laundering risk assessments, public health systems implement epidemic triage, and hospital emergency rooms have triage protocols. Limited manpower, time, and funds must be prioritized for high-risk, high-harm events—this is the most fundamental principle of modern governance.

Yet the judiciary seems stuck in the mindset that 'as long as the elements of a crime are met, proceed to prosecution.' As a result, a 75-yuan coffee can mobilize police, prosecutors, and courts; a rice cooker can go through a full criminal process. Meanwhile, fraud rings, drug crimes, cross-border cybercrime, human trafficking, and major economic crimes languish due to case complexity and insufficient personnel.

This is not because the judiciary is too busy, but because it fails to allocate limited resources to the areas of highest risk and greatest social harm.

A key principle of risk management is: 'Not all risks should be handled with the same cost.' The same applies to the judiciary. Criminal law should be the last resort, not the first option. When corporate mismanagement, workplace errors, labor disputes, or even fatigue-induced mistakes are criminalized, the judiciary ceases to be the final safeguard of social safety and instead becomes a tool for cleaning up corporate mismanagement and enforcing organizational discipline.

The most commendable aspect of the High Court's ruling is not just the acquittal, but the governance philosophy expressed in its obiter dictum: employers must bear management responsibility, prosecutors must fulfill their duty as guardians of public interest, and courts must return to ordinary people's lived experiences to carefully assess whether there was truly an intent to unlawfully possess. This is a reminder to the entire judicial system: what is truly needed is risk identification, not procedural inertia.

However, a single case being corrected in the second trial does not mean the system is sound. For the individual involved, the police interrogation, transfer, prosecution, trial, stigma of a criminal record, work pressure, and social judgment are all real costs. If the system only corrects itself at the appellate level, the price is already paid by the people.

From a public policy perspective, a truly mature judiciary does not rely on repeated corrections in appellate courts, but establishes a risk triage mechanism early in the investigation phase. Based on the degree of legal interest violation, subjective intent, social harm, and public interest, it should determine which cases should enter criminal proceedings and which should be handled through administrative, civil, mediation, or internal corporate management channels. This is not about condoning illegality, but about restoring criminal law to its role as the last resort and maximizing the public value of judicial resources.

The 75-yuan latte case and the rice cooker case may seem like trivial everyday incidents, but together they illuminate a larger systemic blind spot: we constantly demand that governments practice risk management, yet rarely ask whether the judiciary needs it too.

If the judiciary cannot effectively distinguish the urgency and severity of cases, no amount of additional manpower or budget will prevent limited resources from being wasted on low-risk events, while truly high-risk, high-harm crimes remain backlogged.

What people should truly fear is not that a coffee costs 75 yuan, or how much a rice cooker is worth, but that if the judiciary continues to lack risk governance thinking, the next person sent into criminal proceedings might just be another exhausted worker who forgot to pay. Meanwhile, crimes that genuinely threaten public safety continue to wait in line amid limited resources.

The greatest risk in justice has never been the occasional wrongful conviction, but the systemic misallocation of finite judicial energy.