Issues of current Korean Corrections-Social Protection System and the Improvement Strategies.
The Korean Corrections-Social Protection system aims at securing the custody of convicts and, at the same time, rehabilitating criminals. The system is divided into two different organizational structures: the correctional structure and the social protection structure. The former consists of detention centers, prisons, and the recidivists center. The latter consists of probation and parole offices, juvenile training schools, the center for classification and assessment of delinquents, and the center for mental disorder inmates. This article attempts to have a glance look at the problems of current organizational structures and their performance and provides recommendations to resolve the issues they have confronted. For the correctional component, the suggestions are first to establish an independent administrative entity called the Central Correctional Agency to give more flexible power and authority to the correctional officers and to make a law concerning to the status and power of correctional officers. For the social protection component, I suggest that the juvenile protection officers should be more professionalized, and that more individualized treatment is required for juvenile delinquents. In addition I also recommend that the number of probation officers should be increased and the probation programs should be more diversified.