소년사건의 합리적 처리를 위한 개선방안 연구

Abstract

Under the premise that adolescents are punished lightly for their actions as they are more innocents and easily adapt to their surroundings compared to adults, the idea of relieving excessively strict Criminal Act against juvenile delinquents first adopted in England was the ideology of protectionism based on parens patriae; this argues that we should treat young offenders differently from adult offenders in criminal judicature because adolescents have different developmental characteristics than those from adults. Thus this paper analyzes the current treatment of juvenile cases in Korea and go on to recognize the problems in handling juvenile cases, suggesting improvement plans for rational treatment of such cases based on parens patriae and the ideology of protectionism. Issues pointed out to be taking place when handling juvenile cases include that of the right to prior consideration of prosecutors, dualization of handling in juvenile court and criminal court, excessive and undiscerning suspension of indictment, insufficient execution of researches before ruling, group detention for juveniles, etc. As rational improvement measures against such problems, implementing police's conditional release on warning and introducing summary justice regulation in Juvenile Act, active utilization of Prosecutor Pre-determination Investigation System and Judge Presentence Investigation System, unification of juvenile case treatments and acquiring expertise, expanding independent detention facilities for segregated detention, and implementing restorative jurisprudence in all levels of juvenile cases were suggested.