교정 패러다임의 변화에 관한 소고

Abstract

Since juvenile crime attracts much attention, Korean society is demanding to give severe punishment to juvenile criminals, to lower the age of punishment, and even asking to abolish the Juvenile Law. While sexual crime and property crime is still increasing, we cannot ignore the fact that the overall repeated-crime rate of the juvenile is gradually decreasing. Furthermore, severe punishment is directly against basic ideology for both juvenile protection and the justice system. Moreover, the Purpose of current Korean Juvenile Law (KJL2007), revised in 2007, is far from the tendency of severe punishment. There were many changes when the 2007 revision was made. Official documents submitted to the National Assembly and many studies do exist to explain the reason why the 2007 revision was conducted. In spite of the importance of purpose, ironically, none of them tried to identify why the first item (purpose) of the KJL2007 had changed. Start from the question, this study reviewed the purposes of juvenile law(pre-revision and revision) to emphasize the importance. Also, suggested upgraded principles following the KJL2007 based on literature reviews. As a short introduction, the biggest one among the changes in the KJL2007 was the way to understand ‘juvenile’. In the pre-revision law, the purpose of juvenile law focuses on “nurturing” of juveniles by state. In this point of view, a juvenile is just passive and dependent being. And the role of state was authoritative. Compared to this, in one of the revised KJL2007, each juvenile has an independence to choose and to be developed themselves. As the way of understanding juveniles changed, the relationship between the state and the juvenile had also changed, from vertical to horizontal. In spite of such changes, the Korean Justice System of Juvenile still has principles based on the old purpose of juvenile law. With researching and several reviews, this study suggested 8 upgraded principles following the changes : Principle of (1) Profit of Children is the first priority from the Convention on the Right of the Child (Article 3rd) (2) Restorative Justice, (3) Partnership with Equality, (4) Cooperation among the related agencies, (5) Scientism and Individualization of Treatment.