전자감독제도의 성과분석 및 발전방안

Abstract

Electronic monitoring(EM) was initially used as an alternative to overcrowding prison populations in the United States and other advanced countries. Currently, the use of electronic monitoring has expanded to supervise serious criminals including sex offenders. On the other hand, electronic monitoring system was introduced as a special measure to protect the public from sex offenders in Korea, where the problems of overcrowding prison populations are relatively less serious. On the basis of positive results until now, the application of electronic monitoring has expanded to include crime of homicide and robbery. Since electronic monitoring system was adopted on September, 2008, the rate of committing new sex crimes by sex offenders was declined to 1.67%, about one ninth of previous recidivism rate. As a result, electronic monitoring system is positively evaluated as an effective crime control measure. But, a recent series of new crimes committed by EM offenders are raising a question about the effectiveness of the electronic monitoring. Although the current electronic monitoring system indicates the whereabouts and movement route of offenders, it does not show what the offenders are doing. Hence, the study is in process to adopt ‘the intelligent electronic monitoring system’ to be able to detect offender’s criminal signs in advance. The most important factor to suppress offender’s new crime might be the dedicated effort of probation officers for it. Therefore, it is required that the responsible probation officers for EM offenders supervise them with sincerity. For this, it needs to increase the number of probation officers with efforts to enhance their specialization.