경찰단계 ‘회복적 사법제도’의 시범운영을 통한 소년사법제도 발전방향 모색

For five months in 2007, the National Police Agency had done conferencing program as a trial operation in the police stage just after the crime occurred. From this, people would experience that Restorative Justice is a very useful system to make offenders reflect on their conduct sincerely and victims heal from their injuries, so that they can not only settle the problem amicably without any retaliatory act but also return to their social life and relationships quickly. However, people could also notice that this system has many difficulties so that it is not easy to achieve the desired effect. First of all, there is a limitation about revitalization because the police have no power to close the case; they cannot give incentives to both parties to participate in the conferencing program. Under current law, it is too weak to attract the offenders to join the conferencing program, because the police don’t have diversion authority and it is limited by ‘full power transference.’ Secondly, only six of the conferencing programs performed successfully because of the lack of exact understanding of the system and heavy workloads of the Police. Offenders and victims were reluctant to go to the police station again, and protectors said that they were badly off. Another problem is that more people are needed to operate the system efficiently. In addition, when the police persuade parties to participate in the program, victims usually get the wrong idea that the police are on the offenders’ side. To solve the problems, it is necessary not only to enact the Restorative Justice in the police stage, but also to enact non-prosecute guidance condition in the police stage for the minor juvenile delinquents.