우리나라 소년범죄의 최근 동향에 대한 평가

Abstract

The area, where the general awareness of people on the recent trend of juvenile delinquencies is well reflected, can be said the legislation process in the National Assembly. For instance, according to the partial revision legislative bill on the Juvenile Act motioned by National Assembly Member Kim Sang-min and other members on November 22nd 2013 and the reason statement on the partial revision legislative bill on the Juvenile Act motioned by National Assembly Member Gang Gi-yun and other members on December 6th 2013, juvenile delinquencies became a serious social issue as the juvenile delinquencies are rapidly increasing recently and the crime methods also became as ferocious as adult crimes. Nevertheless, the punishments commensurate with the juvenile delinquencies are not being imposed because the juvenile criminals are still young and it causes the difficulty in the restriction of juvenile delinquencies. This critical viewpoint on the recent juvenile delinquencies trend is being expressed not only in the National Assembly but also in the academic circles. There are some questions in relation to this phenomenon as following. Are the juvenile delinquencies really in increasing trend compared to the past? Are they becoming more ferocious? Are the ages of juvenile criminals in decreasing trend? Are the juvenile delinquencies habitualized? Are the criminal sanctions commensurate with the juvenile delinquencies properly imposed? In addition, from what bases such questions and presumptions can be drawn is also a concern. Accordingly, it is necessary to analyze the recent trend of juvenile delinquencies. For this, this study adopted the most generally used methodology, which is evaluating the juvenile delinquencies trend by focusing on the criminal statistics information provided by various government agencies. The discussion in this study will be limited to the juvenile delinquencies occurrence status and the juvenile justice cases handling status. This study establishes a general theory on the juvenile delinquencies occurrence status and evaluates the theory by focusing on the general status of juvenile delinquencies, status by juvenile delinquencies type, status by the age of juvenile criminals, status by previous convictions, status by education level and status of female juvenile delinquencies. Then the article will be closed with an analysis on the status of juvenile justice cases by focusing on the juvenile delinquencies handling status at the prosecution, the registration status of juvenile justice cases and the handling status of juvenile justice cases.