현행 과태료 제도의 문제점과 합리적 정비방안 - 영국에서의 관련 제도운영을 참고하여 -

It is true that the means of securing the effectiveness of the administration, which enforces the relevant laws and regulations, is very important in that the administrative means in a state achieve realize the purpose of administration and secure the administrative order due to the fact that non-enforced administrations undermine the meanings and purposes of administrations concerning administrative legislations. For that reason, the administrative laws and concerned ordinances have a variety of administrative means like administrative penalties, administrative enforcement and administrative immediate enforcement and so on. Among these means, the administrative penalties refers to “he punishment imposed by the state or the local government as a sanction based on the administrative law against those who break down the administrative laws.” We cannot emphasize too much the significance of the administrative penalties in that we are able to secure the effectiveness of the administration and to set the desirable direction of the administrative order thorough the administrative penalties. Particularly, the administrative penalties are divided into the administrative punishment and administrative order punishment. And the former is a sanction against the acts to violate the laws materially and the latter is a sanction against the trivial violations against the laws, which can lead to the administrative disruptions to some extent, though it does not influence the general social interests. In particular, administrative order punishment, that is, the administrative fine for minor violation against the laws, is essential means for the sake of establishment of strict administration order. Furthermore as the administrative fine is simple to impose, it is possible to secure the immediate procedure. And we can not deny the meaning and interest of the administrative fine, in that policy to adopt and apply the administrative fine is harmonious with current trend, decriminalization. Nevertheless, it is well known that the administrative fine is a penalty that lacks the effective enforcement and imposes a trivial violation against the law. Moreover he fact that there is no clear criterion in deciding the amount of imposed administrative fine shows that the system relating to the operation of the administrative penalty is still to be improved. Thus it is necessary for us to refer to the experience of United Kingdom because the State has operated the system of the administrative fine fairly and flexibly. Taking into the consideration of the system for the sake of administrative fine in U.K., we are able to consider the diversification of the fine imposition procedure, effective provision of related information for the payment and resilience of the amount of fines and the various operation of the appeal system etc. As mentioned, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that as the administrative penalties is the sanction which is aimed to slight violation, we can not focus on the enforcement for the administrative fine too much. Therefore we had better have the reverse idea focusing on the voluntary payment of the fine rather than enforcement.