With a high-industrialized society and proliferating of nuclear family system, our society has been experiencing a breakdown of public morals and the values relevant to traditional family system. In addition, crimes have been increasing in number. It is believed that a rapid economic growth and the actualization of information-oriented society are a shortcut to the welfare state. However, we are facing its side-effects and an expansion of discontent of the underprivileged. In the rapidly changing society, criminals' ages are becoming lower and especially offenders who are in middle age are increasing. Moreover, the released prisoners are convicted of another crime. Therefore, the criminal policy focuses on the crime prevention and rehabilitation of offenders. Since the later 19th century, the study on re-offender and their rehabilitation have been conducted. The vicious circle of crime proves that correction and the social protection policy for released prisoners may be ineffective. The recent trends for prevention of re-offending is going from the institutional detention to community treatment, which is the development of the probation system. The national probation system is very important to protect the released prisoners. It is natural that the rehabilitation system is a fundamental of criminal policy and a special deterrence against recidivism in crime prevention system. In addition, it is settled down as the most traditional social protection step of community treatment. The first purpose of this study is creation of sound social climate through the prevention of reconviction by released prisoners and seeking for the role of the rehabilitation system in order to give effective supports to them. The second purpose is to examine the relationship between prevention of re-offending and rehabilitation system in details, and to investigate the realities and problems of rehabilitation for released prisoners. The final purpose is to find a way to revitalize rehabilitation system by analyzing critically the directions and programs of the Korea Rehabilitation Agencies.

This study is a review paper which re-analyzes correctional programs and finds successful factors on recidivism. The principal papers rivewed in this study are Lipsey(l999), Gendreau(l996), and Antonowicz & Ross (l994). The strengths of these reviewed papers lie in the extensiveness and the statistical methdology, namely 'meta analysis'. Meta analysis produces different effect sizes from various research and a test statistic(Q value) for the comparison. Particulary, Lipsey(1999) rivewed 400 papers which had reported effectivessness of the correctional programs in English during the year of 1950 through 1995, and extracted 150 successful factors on recidivism. And also he reported unsuccessful determinants in correctional programs. This paper also introduced profiles of the successful programs implemented to jevenile delinquents and adult criminals in the American continent with a intention to share insights with readers for better correctional programs in Korea. Finally, the conclusion of this review is: First, the correctional programs focused on deterrence or psycho-dynamics (e.g., unconsciousness) are not successful. Second, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy techniques focused on the reduction of individual's criminogenic needs are most successful.