소년법상 화해권고제도의 운영방안과 문제점

Abstract

Korean Juvenile Act 2007 introduced reconciliation recommendation system, thus it is possible for Juvenile court judges to take means for recommending reconciliation between juvenile offender and victim. Starting with the reconciliation recommendation system in the revised Juvenile Act,the necessity and importance of restorative justice ins on the increase. The way of operating restorative justice in this system is under discussion. Even though that system is started whit many critics and limitations,Article 25-3 of Korean Juvenile Act is meaningful to korean juvenile justice system because it laid practical groundwork for autonomous problem-solving to both parties. This essay focuses on the characteristics of reconciliation recommendation system, its significance and operation plan of Seoul Family Court. In addition, problems with the current system is also briefly be discussed. Deviated from retributive justice which is concentrated on offenders’punishment, restorative justice considers healing the harms of victims and a local community. The purpose of this is to recover the social solidarity and the safety of a community by voluntary participation of a communty and its members. It is difficult for current reconciliation recommendation not only to be said a true restorative justice, but also to do well in practice. Despite the debate on the concept, reconciliation recommendation system of korean juvenile Act may belong to the restorative Justice. Regardless of the debate about the characteristics of system, current system has some problems as follows:Firstly, since conflict mediation can be conducted in court stage, it is hard to select the samples to apply restorative justice. Secondly, it is the judge who decides whether a party participates in communication for reconciliation. Moreover, problems are revealed such as imperfection of specific guidelines for concrete practice(preparing guideline is underway),how to keep mediation subjects and so on. Also there is no regulator to observe whether both parties perform mutual agreement or not. To overcome some problems in this situation, several efforts are needed. To revitalize this system, We have to try to operate restorative justice in the early stage and if possible, at each stage during the procedure. Moreover, it is necessary to set up a regulator to check whether both parties perform mutual agreement or not. Above all, it is very strongly needed that adequate and appropriate material and human resources should be provided to this system.