사기범죄 집행유예 결정기준의 적절성에 관한 경험적 검토

The purpose of this paper is to describe and examine the significant factors on in-out decision for general fraud cases in S. Korea, as recognizing the lack of empirical research on sentencing for defrauders, and to assess the adequacy of the Korean sentencing guidelines on the basis of the analyses. The data were obtained from the Prosecutorial Guideline System (PGS) of the Korean Supreme Prosecutors' Office. Based on the PGS data archive, a total of 2,335 available fraud cases, sentenced between July 1st, 2011 and March 31st, 2013, were collected. Due to the dependent variable (in-out decision) which is dichotomous, logistic regression analyses were mainly employed. The results contain the frequencies adopted and the explanatory power of in-out decision factors (or predictors) in the sentencing guideline. The results are reported according to the subtypes of fraud crimes divided by the magnitude of illegal money and by the penalty ordinances. The finding indicates that the goodness-of-fits of the whole models are relatively poor even though there are many factors that are significant in predicting the in-out decision. Especially, we found that the predictive ability of the major-positive factors, as a group, was poor, therefore, the group needs to be reorganized if possible. Among non-legal and demographic factors, the effect of gender (male) was moderately significant. The detailed policy implications for the Korean sentencing guideline system, especially for defrauders, are discussed in the context.