소년수형자에 대한 화상상담 필요성에 관한 연구

Abstract

Juvenile inmates tend to be more flexible in their thoughts than adult ones, which can make it easier to induce value changes in those young people behind the bars. Instrumental to the induction of changes for the better is counseling. Even though face-to-face counseling is currently institutionalized and provided for those young inmates, the service tend to be perfunctory and stereotyped, thus rendering them insufficient support. That is the reason why this study proposes video-based counseling to address problems with the conventional counseling. As a preliminary study to survey opinions of juvenile inmates on the proposed video-based counseling, a questionaire was composed, distributed, and retrieved. The results of the survey showed that the majority of those respondents were in favor of the new service, stating that it would be very helpful for correction and stable in-prison life. Most feasible methods for video-based counseling may be to construct computer-to-smartphone and tablet PC-to-smartphone network systems. Specifically, communication application programs such as Skype and Circle can be downloaded for free on the mobile devices with video chatting functions so as to make accounts for counselors and juvenile clients. Since these methods charges no amount of money for video communication, clients can have in-depth counseling with counselors without confinement to time limit. While it is expected that many problem may be encountered such as those with security, technology, law, budget allocation, operation, constant updating effort will make this counseling service truly worthy of its name as justifiable as the conventional counseling service.