Major Overhaul of Criminal Justice System: Are There Concerns for Serious Crime Response?

〈앵커〉

[Anchor] Then, let's examine what specifically changes in the criminal justice system starting tomorrow (October 2) and how it will impact the public's lives, joined by senior legal reporter Im Chanjong.

Q. Major overhaul of the criminal justice system... Are there no concerns?

[Im Chanjong / Senior Legal Reporter] In fact, the most serious problem is that even experts find it difficult to predict what specific issues will arise. Procedural laws like the Criminal Procedure Act are like the operating system of a computer or smartphone. So, it is essentially like our citizens, who have been using the iPhone operating system, suddenly switching to Android tomorrow without changing the hardware. However, when fundamentally changing an operating system like this, common sense dictates that extensive pre-testing should be conducted to iron out bugs before release. In fact, when civil procedure laws were extensively revised, pre-review work took several years. But this time around with the Criminal Procedure Act revision, such a process was absent. Therefore, experts frankly predict that it is difficult to foresee what specific problems will crop up in various areas, such as detention periods and the admissibility of evidence. That being said, we can still outline the broad framework of problems focusing on areas that have been controversial so far.

Q. What impact will this have on the handling of public cases?

[Im Chanjong / Senior Legal Reporter] Two issues are raised first. The prolonged processing of cases and a drop in the indictment rate. What this means is that if you fall victim to a crime, not only will it take longer for the perpetrator to be brought to trial, but the very probability of the perpetrator being indicted will likely decrease. This is because prosecutors' supplementary investigations have been abolished. Cases that prosecutors previously investigated supplementally and indicted themselves must now be sent back to the police with a request for supplementary investigation, inevitably lengthening the processing time. Furthermore, because there is no guarantee that the police will conduct supplementary investigations as requested by prosecutors, cases where supplementary investigations are not carried out according to prosecutors' intentions are likely to see an increase in non-indictment decisions by prosecutors.

Q. Any problems in responding to serious crimes?

[Im Chanjong / Senior Legal Reporter] A vacuum is inevitable for the time being. Starting tomorrow, there are three agencies capable of investigating serious crimes: the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), the police, and the newly established Serious Crime Investigation Agency. Among these, the CIO lacks both authority and capacity, the police are not a specialized serious crime investigation agency and are expected to be busy handling a surge of general cases for the time being, and the Serious Crime Investigation Agency is practically unprepared, as seen earlier. For a while, no single institution will be able to properly conduct investigations. Consequently, some even analyze that the biggest beneficiaries of this situation will be criminals who have committed serious crimes whose statutes of limitations expire within the next 6 months to 1 year, but have not yet been caught. This is because it is projected that the serious crime investigation system will not normalize by then. Apart from this, structural problems are also pointed out. As explained earlier, the CIO, police, and Serious Crime Investigation Agency will share slightly overlapping investigative powers, which creates room for agencies to pass unwanted cases onto one another. Therefore, concerns are also rising that a phenomenon may occur where nobody wants to take on so-called "cases involving living power" or burdensome cases.

(Video by Seeun Shin)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.