자치경찰 수사권의 단계적 이양에 관한 공법적 과제 - 제주특별자치도 자치경찰단을 중심으로 -

This study examines the public law issues surrounding the gradual transfer of investigative authority to local police, focusing on the autonomous police system of Jeju Special Self-Governing Province (hereinafter referred to as the Jeju model). As police power directly affects fundamental rights, its exercise requires strict adherence to the principle of legal reservation and democratic control. Despite being designed as an independent organization, the Jeju model remains functionally confined to administrative policing—such as public safety, traffic control, and basic order maintenance—due to the absence of general investigative authority. The lack of judicial police powers structurally disrupts the continuity between crime prevention and criminal investigation, limiting the accumulation of local crime data and hindering policy feedback. Consequently, the autonomous police tend to function as a supplementary body to the national police rather than as a fully accountable authority responsible for local public security. This structural limitation undermines the realization of locally accountable policing, which is a core objective of the autonomous police system. Against this backdrop, this study reconceptualizes the issue of investigative authority not as a matter of full-scale transfer, but as a problem of gradual and differentiated allocation based on the nature, risk level, and regional characteristics of crimes. To this end, the study analyzes the constitutional limits of investigative authority distribution through the principles of legal reservation, proportionality, and local autonomy, while also examining the institutional framework of the current Police Act and the Jeju Special Act. In addition, a comparative legal analysis of the local police systems in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom is conducted to explore how investigative authority can be decentralized without creating enforcement gaps or enabling abuses of power. These foreign legal systems commonly designate local police as the primary actors in ordinary criminal investigations, while limiting national agencies to exceptional and supplementary roles in cases involving serious, organized, or transregional crimes. Based on this analysis, the study proposes a model of gradual investigative authority transfer, under which local police are granted limited jurisdiction over regionally rooted crimes, combined with a multi-layered control structure involving prosecutorial judicial oversight, democratic control by collegiate autonomous police commissions, and minimal coordination at the national level. This model is presented as a public law alternative capable of preventing enforcement gaps while simultaneously promoting substantive local autonomy and democratic police accountability.