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Structural Limitations of Korea’s Current Autonomous Police System and the Legislative-Policy Design of an Accountability-Based Autonomous Police Model — Focusing on Comparative Police Accountability Structures and the Redesign of Resident-Centered Local Policing —

  • Legal Theory & Practice Review
  • Abbr : LTPR
  • 2026, 14(3), pp.109~162
  • Publisher : The Korea Society for Legal Theory and Practice Inc.
  • Research Area : Social Science > Law
  • Received : August 10, 2026
  • Accepted : August 22, 2026
  • Published : August 31, 2026

신주현 1,  Lee, In Gon 2

1호서대
2호서대학교

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ABSTRACT

Korea’s current autonomous police system has established a statutory foundation for treating community safety, traffic control, and the protection of socially vulnerable persons as autonomous police affairs. It has also created city and provincial autonomous police committees through which local policing demands may be reflected in regional policies. Nevertheless, the organizations and personnel responsible for carrying out autonomous police affairs remain within the national police system, while substantial authority over personnel, finance, and operational command has not been transferred. Consequently, policy-making authority, field-level implementation, and accountability for policing outcomes are divided among different institutions. This study approaches these limitations not merely as a question of allocating police functions or choosing between unified and dual organizational models, but as a problem involving the attribution of functions, organization, personnel authority, financial responsibility, command authority, and accountability for outcomes. It analyzes the current statutory and operational framework and compares the police accountability structures of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. The comparison demonstrates that local police institutions generally assume primary responsibility for community policing, whereas the central government retains responsibility for national standards, interregional coordination, professional support, and the correction of regional disparities. Democratic control is exercised by residents and local councils, while political neutrality in individual law-enforcement activities is protected through collegiate police bodies and statutory limitations on political intervention. Based on these findings, this study proposes the phased alignment of autonomous police affairs with their implementing organizations, beginning with community-safety functions, and the establishment of city and provincial autonomous police headquarters under autonomous police committees. It further proposes the substantive transfer of personnel and ordinary command authority, the creation of stable statutory funding such as an autonomous police grant, and the legal institutionalization of joint-response and jurisdictional-dispute mechanisms between the national and autonomous police. An accountability-based autonomous police system signifies a transition from the formal decentralization of functions to responsibility-based decentralization, under which the institution exercising policing authority must explain and assume responsibility for its outcomes.

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