경찰단계에서 회복적 사법 활성화 방안에 관한 연구 - 소년법 제25조의3 화해권고제도를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The emergence of the restorative justice model can be seen as an inevitable result of the limitations of the punitive criminal justice model, which has traditionally focused primarily on retributive punishment and the resocialization of offenders and has proven insufficient in promoting the recovery of crime victims. The introduction of restorative justice principles was therefore a natural development. Consequently, establishing a point of equilibrium between, on the one hand, the public’s sense of justice regarding the state’s exercise of punitive power, and on the other hand, the victim’s interest in harm restoration, is an extremely difficult task. Nevertheless, despite their ideological and institutional objectives and expectations, it cannot be denied that the currently operating criminal mediation system and the reconciliation recommendation system under the Juvenile Act have revealed various vulnerabilities in practice during their implementation. Accordingly, it is now an important and timely task to examine the overall problems associated with criminal mediation and reconciliation recommendation systems from the perspective of restorative justice and to seek directions for their improvement. This study aims to identify the problems of the reconciliation recommendation system under the Juvenile Act, which has been introduced and operated as part of restorative justice since 2007, and to explore improvement measures at the police stage, at a time when changes in the criminal justice process have become urgent due to the planned abolition of the Prosecutors’ Office in 2026.