벌금형 집행의 현황과 과제

Abstract

Fines account for 80% of the whole punishments in Korea. Fines are widely adopted because they have high deterrent power by forfeiting property, which is significant in modern capitalistic society; negative effects of short-term imprisonment can be prevented; and execution cost is relatively modest. However, demands for reforming fine system have been continued since fines have possibilities of generating inequality in effects of executing punishments among the sentenced depending on their financial status, and causing negative effects of short-term imprisonment if a fine is small while causing ‘emperor’s labor’ controversy if a fine is large, when the fine is executed by detention in a work house. As a result, recent revision in Criminal Act introduced the stay of execution of fines under 5,000,000 Won and the lower limit of detention period in a work house according to the amount of a fine. Moreover, installment payment of fines, postponement of paying fines, and paying fines by credit card were legislated by the recent revision in Criminal Procedure Act. These revisions are expected to solve the problems of the fine system mentioned above. Among the legislation tasks to reform the fine system, day fine system has advantage of reducing inequality in punishment effects. However, up to now, since no reasonable solutions to answer practical problems of operating day fine system, such as whether to substitute fixed-sum fine system, whether to include summary procedure cases, the way of investigating incomes, or the range of one-day fine, etc. have been come up, implementing day fine system at this point should be carefully considered. While maintaining fixed-sum fine system, measures should be sought to improve the system as follows. Detention in a work house should be minimized to reduce its side effects. Necessary concurrent-imposition of fines also needs to be reduced, and converting fines to administrative fines should be expanded. Besides, installment payment, postponing payment, and replacing fine with community service need to be expanded for those fined small, while ways to make fines paid by money-not by labor in a work house-as initially intended, such as extending prescription period of executing fines and tracing concealed property should be sought for those fined large.