미국의 성범죄 법제의 최근 경향과 우리법제에 있어 적용 가능성

Reconsidering the Modern Trend of Punishing/Managing Sex Crimes in the United States and the Possibility of Adaptation of the Trend in Korea

Sex offenders are one of most hated breed in modern society. The heinous nature of the sex crimes often shocks the public and motivates them to legislate new laws restricting their rights as citizens. Many preventive measures against sex offender recidivism have been created by policy makers. However, more often than not, those measures are neither workable nor effective because those can be unnecessarily excessive while not working toward any progression. In the United States, the criminal justice system handles most convicted sex offenders with some combination of incarceration, community supervision, and specialized treatment. Although the numbers of incarcerated sex offenders are on the increase, the reality is that many of them are being managed under some form of conditional supervision in the community they are members of. Those forms include so called civil commitment, notification/registration and tracking management throughout GPS device and etc. At the moment, it might be too early to tell whether such measures truly revolutionary ones to prevent any future wrong-doings. Rather, the negative aspects of the new trend such as being too invasive, labelling attract people's attention. Considering the downside of the new trend, is it possible to transfer the trend into Korea? This article is an attempt to answer the never-ending question. Do the people have any orientation to commit sex crimes? If so, can we give the sex offenders immeasurable punishment? What would be the limit of such punishment?