청소년 범죄 대책으로서의 법교육

Recently, juvenile crimes are becoming very frequent and the danger level of such crimes are rivaling that of adult crimes. This phenomenon can be traced to the materialism commercialism, contact with provocative adult culture,excessive competitiveness due to admission-oriented education, etc. which are harmful consequences of the society encouraged by the adults. Despite this fact,cold stares reaped on juvenile crime, sharp criticism, and discussions focused on penalizing such youths make it more and more difficult for the youths to escape the life of crime. However, we must not overlook the aspect that these youths are also victims of the social environment created by us. In other words,the cause of juvenile crime does not necessarily lie in youths but we must also be held responsible for creating the social environment that fosters juvenile crime. As a part of activity to form the correct legal awareness and values for youths, the level of morality and legal awareness can be increased through education held at school, a place where youths spend the most time, and the law needs to be understood as a common sense necessary to live our lives and consequently, as an indicator of our actions. Legal awareness and values formed during youth can be directly linked to the corresponding personality traits as an adult. Since it is very difficult to change legal awareness and values of an individual that have already been formed, there is great significance in educating such legal concepts during youth. Therefore, we must provide appropriate legal education during youth to form the correct legal awareness and values and lead the youths to the right path.