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Are ‘Abnormally Motivated Crime’ Appropriate?

  • Journal of Human Rights Studies
  • Abbr : JHRS
  • 2024, 7(1), pp.193-222
  • DOI : 10.22976/JHRS.2024.7.1.193
  • Publisher : Korean Association of Human Rights Studies
  • Research Area : Social Science > Law > Law of Special Parts > Human Rights / International Human Rights Law
  • Received : May 15, 2024
  • Accepted : June 18, 2024
  • Published : June 30, 2024

Yoon, wn-ho 1

1한양대학교 한국후견‧신탁연구센터

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines the appropriateness of the term “abnormally motivated crime” as an alternative to ‘“don't ask” crime’, which was proposed by the policing studies. In Korea, the old authoritarian and modern social order, represented by cheerfulness and health, still maintains a legal order that punishes ‘abnormalities’ and ‘edifies’ them into normality. In such a social atmosphere, the concept of ‘abnormality’ is arbitrarily and easily applied to ‘abnormal’ beings, which not only makes the socially disadvantaged position themselves as discriminated against, but also provokes various kinds of violence based on authoritarianism. Recent government policies that reduce criminality to the emotional state of the individual on the grounds of ‘abnormality’, and that have led to the surveillance, forced hospitalisation and self-admission of ‘mentally ill’ people, also violate international human rights law, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. According to the human rights model of disability, the problem of Korean society and communities failing to prevent the physicalisation of an individual's ideals should not be overlooked. ‘Abnormally motivated crime’ is not a proper word because the notion blocks the social participation of persons with psychological disabilities, and blinds them from finding out the social environment that causes their criminal acts. Therefore, the word may be improper from the interdisciplinary viewpoint, and alternative words like ‘random crime’.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.