학교폭력예방법상 조정 강화 방안

When the School Violence Prevention Act was enacted in 2004, the law was based on a dichotomous structure of sanctioning the offending student and protecting the victimized student. However, criticism was raised that it was difficult to achieve educational goals with this dichotomous approach alone, and after several revisions, the current law has systems related to reconciliation and mediation, such as the school principal self-resolution system, relationship improvement program system, and dispute mediation system. However, many scholars believe that these systems still have many shortcomings and need to be improved. First, the school principal self-resolution system can only be implemented with the consent of the victimized student and his/her guardian, can only be implemented for minor cases, and there is no legal basis for the school principal to take any action against the offending student. In order to improve this, it was concluded that it is necessary to take certain measures that can serve as a warning to the offending student, such as a ‘written warning’, even in cases subject to the school principal’s own resolution, and that it is not necessary to require the consent of the victimized student’s parents as a prerequisite, and that it is necessary to attempt conflict mediation from the initial stage of reviewing whether to refer the case to the school principal’s own resolution. Let’s look at the following case of the relationship restoration program. First of all, this program also has the limitation that it is conducted only for minor cases, and since this program is conducted when the victimized student wishes to punish the offending student and the case is referred to the School Violence Countermeasures Deliberation Committee, there are limitations such as the victimized student focusing more on punishing the offending student than this program, and furthermore, in order for this program to be operated successfully, the results of the operation must have some influence on the measures taken against the offending student, but this point is not secured, etc. As a measure for improvement, it was concluded that it is necessary to classify school violence cases into borderline cases, low, medium, and high risk cases, and to conduct a relationship recovery program for borderline cases and low and medium risk groups, in-depth research is needed to enrich the content of this program, and the results of this program should be reflected in the measures taken against the offending student. Lastly, regarding the dispute mediation system, the focus of this system is the mediation of damages, not the reconciliation between the offending student and the victimized student, it is unclear whether the results of the dispute mediation affect the measures taken against the offending student, and there are various limitations, such as the dispute mediation itself being suspended if one of the parties refuses the dispute mediation. In order to improve this, it is necessary to approach dispute mediation not as a compensation for damages, but from an educational perspective of reflection and apology by the offending student and forgiveness by the victimized student. It is necessary to consider dividing school violence cases into borderline cases and low, medium, and high risk groups, and to consider a method of requiring dispute mediation in borderline cases and low risk groups, and allowing dispute mediation in the medium risk group if the victimized student agrees. It was concluded that even in a no-contact state, a third-party dispute mediation procedure is necessary, there is an urgent need to train mediation experts, and there is a need to review the introduction of a reconciliation recommendation system by applying the system under the Juvenile Act, and the results of mediation should be reflected in the measures taken by the offending student. It is hoped that by introducing these improvement measures, the School Violence Prevention Act will be able to handle school violence appropriately for educational purposes by mediating or reconciling the relationship between the offending student and the victimized student.