중대재해처벌법의 문제점과 법정책학적 개선방안

The Serious Accidents Punishment Act is a special criminal statute that provides for the punishment of employers, responsible management personnel, public officials, and corporations when a serious industrial accident or a serious civic accident occurs. The Act aims not only to prevent serious accidents but also to protect the lives and bodily integrity of citizens and workers. In other words, the primary objective of the Act is the prevention of accidents. To achieve this purpose, the legislative intent of the Act is to supplement the criminal sanctions provided under occupational safety and health laws. Accordingly, the Act explicitly prescribes safety and health obligations as objective elements of the constituent requirements of the offense, thereby taking the form of a genuine omission offense. However, under the current Serious Accidents Punishment Act, criminal liability arises only when casualties occur while safety and health obligations have been violated. In other words, although the Act contains elements characteristic of negligence offenses—namely, the violation of a duty of care—it is nevertheless structured as a special form of a result-aggravated offense that does not fully correspond with the general provisions of criminal law. Nevertheless, it may be regarded as a meaningful special criminal statute in that it provides a possible clue for addressing the problem of gaps in punishment for unforeseeable negligent offenses in the future. Strictly speaking, in criminal law it is generally considered impossible to establish a result-aggravated offense based on a negligent offense. Nevertheless, the Serious Accidents Punishment Act provides for offenses such as death or injury caused by industrial accidents and death or injury caused by civic accidents. These provisions appear to take the form of result-aggravated offenses and may therefore raise controversies regarding the application of legal consequences. In this regard, the intention of the legislature may be interpreted as presupposing that violations of safety and health obligations may occur through both intent and negligence. From this perspective, acts that violate Articles 4, 5, and 9 of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act may be regarded as a legislative framework that modifies or expands the traditional doctrine of result-aggravated offenses. Nevertheless, this legislative structure requires a systematic re-examination. However, in order to secure the effectiveness of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, this study proposes the following minimum legislative measures that are sufficiently feasible from a legal policy perspective while maintaining the current legislative framework to the greatest extent possible. First, it is necessary to establish a system of industrial safety inspectors under the Ministry of Employment and Labor in order to strengthen accident prevention. Second, based on the principle of equity, it is necessary either to delete Article 3 of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act or to specify a grace period concerning the exceptions to the application of the Act for small-scale employers or responsible management personnel. Third, it is necessary to consider a legislative amendment to Article 6(1) and (2) of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act by adding the phrase “or violates,” so that criminal punishment may be imposed even when the relevant obligations are not fulfilled regardless of whether an industrial accident has occurred. Fourth, it would be appropriate to amend Article 8(1) of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act so that, in addition to serious industrial accidents, responsible management personnel of corporations or institutions are also required to complete safety and health education in cases of serious civic accidents.