본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

A Study on Control Measures for the Expansion of Police Power and Concentration of Investigative Authority under the Revised Criminal Procedure Act- Focusing on the Concentration and Accountability of Police Investigative Powers - ❙투고일자: 2026년 08월 10일 ❙심사일자: 2026년 08월 22일 ❙게재확정: 2026년 08월 27일 * 유원대학교 경찰소방행정학부 교수

  • Legal Theory & Practice Review
  • Abbr : LTPR
  • 2026, 14(3), pp.65~108
  • Publisher : The Korea Society for Legal Theory and Practice Inc.
  • Research Area : Social Science > Law
  • Received : August 10, 2026
  • Accepted : August 27, 2026
  • Published : August 31, 2026

Gunwoong Yeom 1

1유원(U1)대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines the expansion and functional concentration of police investigative authority following the 2020 amendment to the Korean Criminal Procedure Act and the investigative authority reform implemented in 2021, and proposes a multi-layered accountability framework. The reform abolished the prosecutor’s general authority to direct police investigations, redefined prosecutors and judicial police officers as cooperative actors, and authorized the police to make first-stage non-referral decisions in cases where criminal suspicion is not recognized. At the same time, the law retained ex post controls including requests for supplementary investigation, corrective measures for illegality or human-rights violations, requests for reinvestigation, objections by interested parties, and judicial control over compulsory measures. In this article, “monopoly of investigative authority” does not mean that the police possess an exclusive legal monopoly over all criminal investigations. Rather, it describes the functional concentration that arises when initiation, progression, and first-stage termination of ordinary criminal investigations are combined within the same nationwide police organization. This distinction is particularly important because the Prosecution Office Act and the Act on the Organization and Operation of the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, enacted in March 2026 and scheduled to take effect on October 2, 2026, indicate a further move toward a pluralized investigative structure. Based on current statutes and recent Korean scholarship published mainly from 2020 through 2026, this study identifies four principal issues: the effectiveness and complexity of controls over police non-referral decisions; delay and repeated movement of cases between investigative bodies; tension between the internal independence and centralization of the National Office of Investigation; and fragmentation of external and democratic oversight. The study proposes: strengthening an independent external oversight mechanism; redesigning remedies against non-referral decisions in stages; expanding judicial review centered on the courts; improving internal controls over case assignment, review, investigation periods, and audit; reinforcing both the organizational independence and public accountability of the National Office of Investigation; clarifying checks and cooperation among police, prosecution, and future serious-crime investigative bodies; and expanding investigative staffing, professional specialization, and disclosure of performance and rights-protection statistics. The central conclusion is that effective control should not restore a comprehensive hierarchical direction model. Instead, investigative independence should be combined with reason-giving, recordability, reviewability, and judicial remedies so that powerful police investigative authority can be exercised within a transparent and accountable framework.

Statistics

  • 0 Viewed
  • 0 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2025 are currently being built.

Basic Search Advanced Search