한국의 강력흉악범죄: 억지력, 소득불평등 및 피해자특성을 중심으로

Korea has faced a three-fold set of hurdles in the criminal justice policy over the 2000s. Violent crime, income inequality, and female victimization have all showed upward-sloping trends. First, the number of violent crimes in Korea increased sharply in the 2000s, and is in a yet faster trend in the later years. Second, according to OECD, Korea' s income inequality also has steadily worsened in the 2000s. Third, female victimization is truly worrisome based on domestic statistics and the reports published by international agencies. As the main purpose of the paper, we estimate the violent crime supply function of Korea by using a panel data method. To build the dataset, we have utilized various sources of databases and government agencies. In the process, we measure the marginal impact of income inequality on violent crimes, and further explore, for the first time in Korea, the relationship between female victimization and the increase in violent crimes. For this goal, we start reestablishing existing theories on the nexus between income equality and violent crimes based on our simple model designed for illustrative purposes. It is well known that the economic literature, relative to the literature in criminology or sociology, has relatively less focused on victim' s characteristics or attributions in explaining crime. However, in this paper we have endeavored to take them into full consideration. We also consider them with the aforementioned economic model to offer a coherent explanation in terms of economic incentives on the part of potential offenders. Estimation results reveal several findings which are noteworthy. The deterrence hypothesis is in force, and, in particular, prosecutory activities show stronger deterrence than arrests by police. Income inequality measure as the Gini Index makes a systematic effect on violent crimes. Representative characteristics of female victims such as the degree of exposure and their economic status are closely related to the occurrence of violent crimes. All these suggest therefore that the criminal justice policy to curb violent crimes, not to mention the efficient allocation of law enforcement resources in the conventional context, should include new instruments aimed to prevent female victimization as well as to ameliorate the adversary effect stemming from worsened income inequality. Considering the tremendous and ever-increasing amount of social costs incurred by violent crimes as have been measured by several experts, the implementation of these policy tools must be carried out immediately along with more inter-disciplinary research if necessary.