범죄피해자지원센터의 운영현황 및 활성화방안

Study on the Support Center for Crime Victims in Korea

Nowadays it is widely accepted that victims of crime are no longer forgotten but a prerequisite to solve the issues of crime in the criminal justice system and crime policy. According to this perception, The Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office, Police, and the Supreme Court each have prepared the comprehensive countermeasures for strengthening of criminal victim protection and support. The common characteristics of the each government agency's comprehensive countermeasures give attention to non-profit/non-governmental organizations as a important partner which provide supports and services with the crime victim with government agency. To facilitating this interest was the private-initiated Support Center for Crime Victim founded in the Gimcheon and Gumi in September, 2003. But there are scarcely non-profit/non-governmental support or service organizations for general crime victims in other regions. Prosecutor which feel acutely the necessity of non-profit/non-governmental organization's activities in crime victim support and services played the trigger role in establishing a total of 55 Support Centers for Crime Victims in units of prosecutor's offices across the nations in short periods. Consequently, most Support Centers for Crime Victims across the nations is not voluntary grassroots non-profit organizations but government-initiated non-profit organizations organized by needs and plans of government, it is difficult for them to classify as the pure non-profit/non-governmental organizations. But currently most Support Centers for Crime Victims have organizational structure, appoint professionals and a leading figures of the locality to the committees, recruit the volunteers, and raise a fund from grants of local government and a leading figure of the locality. Therefore, externally they have been possessing the non-prof-it/non-governmental organization's frame, and some centers evoke a favorable response in the local community by actively providing supports and services for crime victim such as counseling, medical service, economic service, assistance to court, and victim-offender mediations etc. Therefore it is time for discussing about how to methods the Support Centers for Crime Victims stably and systematically provide supports and services meeting each regional crime victim's needs. By examining the activities and programs of 54 the Support Centers for Crime Victims during last one year(2005) and government's support policies to the Support Centers of Crime Victim as non-profit/non-governmental organization, this study reviews the problems of their management and the limitations of government's support policies, and considers methods to strengthen the Support Centers of Crime Victim's internal capacity and to enlarge the government's direct and indirect support policies to the Support Centers of Crime Victim.