경제적 계층이 형사사법 불공정 인식에 미치는 영향: 사회갈등 인식과의 관계성을 중심으로

Critical criminology in the Western countries has long dealt with the relationship between one’s economic status and his/her perception of criminal justice system. This issue is based on the conflict perspective toward the creation and enforcement of law. On the contrary, overwhelmed by classical and positivist criminology, our criminology academia lacks critical analyses about the legitimacy of criminal justice system. The current study aims to examine how the perception of criminal justice system varies by one’s economic status and how the perceived social conflict is associated with the causal process. We used the data drawn from ‘Public Opinion Survey on the Role of the Government and Quality of Life, 2018,’ and the sample size was 6,300 in total. We conducted multiple regression analysis to find out the effect of economic class upon perceived criminal injustice and the mediating/moderating effects of perceived social conflict as well. The result shows that economic class declines and the level of perceived social conflict increases, the level of perceived criminal injustice increases. The perceived social conflict has mediating and moderating effects between the economic class and perceived criminal injustice. These results imply that the criminal justice system should strengthen legitimacy and the government should reduce the level of conflict in our society.