소년형사사건에서 양형조사의 합리적 운영방안

A Study on the Rational Management of Sentencing Investigation in Juvenile Criminal Cases

Given that juvenile offenders are treated differently from adult offenders based on parens patriae and educational penal theory, administration of juveniles should be specialized. Because considering family circumstances or career in juvenile cases is comparable to determination of punishment of adult offenders, it is prior to discuss the meaning of examination of offenses in juvenile criminal procedures. There are various types of juvenile survey system in trials, each of which should be analyzed in terms of characteristics and content for discussing reasonable methods of management in examination of offenses in juvenile criminal cases. Sentencing examination of offenses in juvenile criminals is needed because juveniles should be considered immature persons, who are not the targets of punishment but the ones of reformation through protection and education. Juvenile offenders need not uniformly strict punishment but appropriate, diversified treatment based on each case in order to protect and educate them as good members of society. In this context, weighing of an offense is required to determine punishment of juveniles based on their process of growth, background, personality, mental status, intent of delinquency, and other circumstantial matters. Such determination needs data that can be used in all stages of criminal case procedures from investigation through execution to treatment in society. It is desirable to unify investigation agencies by integrating the presentence investigation system by probation officers and the sentence investigation system by court investigators to ultimately organize a centralized sentence investigation system. As in cases of sentence examination for adults, in addition, sentence investigation of juvenile criminal cases should be interpreted to be applied by the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code and the legal basis needs to be specified in the Code. Because investigation of juvenile offenders is directly linked to juvenile treatment, it should be conducted in such a way that the personal characteristics of each juvenile can be scientifically assessed. Given that the importance of such investigation for treatment of individual juveniles based on juvenile protection ideology, the number of investigators need to be increased. Above all, sentence investigation of juvenile criminal cases targets incomplete, immature juveniles, requiring investigation techniques and investigators specialized in juvenile cases that can be scientifically assessed when compared to sentence investigation for adult cases.