최근 영아의 생명을 존중하고 보호하기 위하여 형법 제251조 영아살해죄를 삭제하여 영아살해를 일반살인으로 처벌하자는 개정논의가 진행되고 있다. 이에 한국의 영아살해 실태를 파악하고, 법령개정 방향을 제안하고자 본 연구를 진행하였다. 이를 위하여 국내외 영아살해에 대한 문헌을 고찰하였고, 국내 2013년~2020년 영아살해죄로 선고된 1심 판결문 46건을 바탕으로 한국 영아살해의 현황과 살해동기, 살해방식, 가해자 특성을 확인하였다. 연구 결과, 살해동기로는 실질적(경제적)으로 양육이 불가능한 경우로 원하지 않은 임신을 하여 도움을 요청할 수 있는 대상이 부재하였고, 치욕 은폐를 위해 임신과 출산사실을 알리지 않은 특징이 있었다. 살해방식은 자신의 주 거지나 타인의 접근이 어려운 건물에서 출산 후 대부분 영아를 질식 혹은 익사시켜 살해하였다. 가해자의 특성으로는 미혼으로 모두 생물학적 친모였으며, 연령대는 우리나라 평균 출산 연령에 비해 낮았다. 또한 대부분 정신질환과 범죄경력을 가지고 있지 않은 특성을 보였다. 이러한 분석결과를 토대로 영아살해에 대한 법률적 제언과 예방책을 제언하였다.

Recently, in order to respect and protect the life of infants, there are discussions on the revision of the crime of infanticide by deleting Article 251 of the Criminal Act and punishing the infanticide as general homicide. In the midst of this, this study aims at understanding the current situation of Infanticide in Korea and suggesting a direction for amendment of the Act. For that purpose, we explored the literature on neonaticide/ infanticide at domestic and abroad, and identified the current status of domestic infanticide, the motive for the homicide, killing method, and the characteristics of the perpetrator based on 46 written judgments of the first-instance cases adjudicated for infanticide between 2013 and 2020 in Korea. As a result of the study, it was identified that the motive for the homicide was that where practically (economically) impossible to bring up, and there was no person to ask for help due to an unwanted pregnancy, and the pregnancy and childbirth were not announced in order to avoid disgrace. As for the killing method, killing without any action immediately after childbirth was used so that infants were killed by suffocating or drowning them in their own residence or in a building that was difficult to access by others. The characteristics of the perpetrators were unmarried biological mothers, and their age was lower than the average age of childbirth in Korea. There were also some subjects, who were not aware of the pregnancy, and there were many cases where the identity of the biological father was not known and the biological father did not know the pregnancy as well. Most of the perpetrators had no mental illness or criminal history. Based on these analysis results, legal recommendations and preventive measures for Infanticide were proposed.

▪국문요약
Ⅰ. 서론
Ⅱ. 이론적 배경
Ⅲ. 연구방법
Ⅳ. 분석 결과
Ⅴ. 결론 및 논의
참고문헌
▪Abstract

• 김성희(경찰대학교 경찰학과) | Kim Sunghee (Department of Police Science, Korean National Police University)
• 성현준(경기대학교 범죄심리학과) | Sung Hyunjun (Kyonggi University)
• 성나경(경기대학교 범죄심리학과) | Seong Nakyung (Kyonggi University) 교신저자