가석방제도의 운영 및 발전방향에 대한 비판적 검토

Abstract

Parole plays an important role to lead inmates to reform him/herself voluntarily and to release low risk inmate back to society earlier than the sentence. However, parole decisions are often influenced by public opinions on crime and the level of individual inmates’preparation of returning to society. Parole in South Korea has been controlled by the Parole Committee in the Ministry of Justice since 1996 when the parole system was revised. The parole system in South Korea has been under various criticism. This study is to review previous criticism on the parole system in South Korea and to present actual problems on the current parole system and future directions to solve these problems. The main criticism on parole is passive parole operation, ambiguous parole standards, insufficient control for the discretionary power in the process of parole applications, and superficial judgements of the Parole Committee. The critical examinations on previous criticism reveal that a lot of efforts to improve the current parole system have been implemented. The recent extension of parole and adaptation of objective measures are the examples of recent improvements. In addition, current parole system by the Parole committee is effective to guarantee the consistent and fairly uniform parole decisions across the South Korea. However, the parole system in South Korea can be more improved by the system integration of adult and juvenile parole, enlargement of current Parole Committee, weighted consideration on inmates’ attitude and adaptation during incarceration, uses of various parole standards and connection to community corrections programs. More importantly, public opinions should be considered when implementing the alleviation of the parole regulations, which could lead to the increase of recidivism rates.