earticle

영어

Since Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) was announced in 2014, English and Welsh Probation model has been introduced as a unique privatization in the community justice system. However, under the new Probation Reform Programme, Ministry of Justice of the UK (2021) published a “Unified Model” in February 2021, terminating the contracts with Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) and bringing supervision and treatment of all offenders back to National Probation Service (NPS) from 28th June 2021. Furthermore, many studies identified that there were significant limitations in privatization in probation such as low levels of delivery, specifically in the private provider (CRC). In addition, the recent report by the Justice Committee (2021) argues that TR lacked sufficient planning or research into its impacts and capacity of private sector, pointing out that CRC has shown significant problems such as lower activity level and collapse of providers. Thus, this study examined the reasons of privatization in probation being ‘a failed social experiment’ (Cooper, 2021, p.46) and the limitations to overcome for the recent Re-unification model. The result of this study showed that there were significant problems in privatization in England and Wales: thin-supervision (Dominey, 2019) due to the ‘payment by result’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2021, p.32), ‘damaged professionalism’ (Cooper, 2021, p.46), ineffectiveness for reducing recidivism and cost, and the systemic limitation in allocation of offenders between NPS and CRC. The findings in this study regarding limitations to be overcome by the Re-unified model are four major respects: (1) proactive cooperation with local professionals by ‘co-production’ (Tidmarsh and Marder, 2021, p.22) (2) ‘recapturing the re-professionalism’ for improving the quality of supervision (Tidmarsh and Marder, 2021, p.22), (3) decreasing heavy workload by increasing number of staff (4) imperfect re-unification in Electronic Monitoring. These results can lead to four policy implications for Korean probation such as enhancement of cooperative work with private providers, improving professionalism of probation officers, enhancement of workforce in staffing for ‘thick supervision’ (Dominey, 2019), developing the Korean probation model specifically in its advanced ICT technology and successful co-production with private professionals and providers. Taken together, although the failure in privation of English and Welsh model, it can be an asset as an empirical social experiment which provides evidence that privatization cannot be only solution for enhancement professionalism and cooperative work with private sectors in the criminal justice system. This study limited in lack of empirical evaluation of the result from the re-unification model and further studies into effectiveness of Dynamic Framework in cooperative work with private and voluntary sectors can ultimately lead to the greater improvement of Korean probation model.

한국어

국가 조직 민영화의 대표적인 선진 모델로 알려진 영국 보호관찰의 이원화 (국영-민영) 운영 체제는, 결국 도입 7년 만인 2021. 6. 28. 시행된 보호관찰 혁신안에 따 라 민영 조직(Community Rehabilitation Company: CRC)이 국영 보호관찰(National Probation Service: NPS)로 전부 통합되면서, 다시 국가 운영 체제로 일원화되었다. 영국 학계는 이 일련의 과정을 ‘보호관찰제도 민영화 실험의 실패’로 규정하면서 그간 민영화 실시로 제도적, 조직 운영 및 관리 측면에서 발생한 다양한 문제점과 함 께 국영화 복귀 후 극복해야 할 과제를 본격적으로 논의하고 있다. 특히, 국영 보호 관찰제도 운영의 문제점을 개선하기 위해 도입된 민영 시스템이 결국 ‘철저한 성과- 보상주의에 따른 보호관찰 지도감독의 형식화, 보호관찰 전문성 저하, 예산 및 재범 률 감소 실패, 이원화 조직의 구조적 한계’등 심각한 문제점으로 인해 실패한 만큼, 재통합된 국영 보호관찰(NPS)이 이러한 시행착오를 극복하고 ‘민간 전문가 등 지역 사회 자원 활용 방식 개선, 전문성 향상, 인력 보강’등 산적한 과제를 해결할 수 있을 지에 대한 우려 또한 큰 것이 현실이다. 아직 국영화 재통합 후의 성과를 논의하기엔 이른 시기지만, 적어도 이 거대한 제 도적, 사회적, 조직적 실험은 다른 국가의 형사사법체계의 민영화 논의에 유용한 실 증적 사례연구가 될 수 있을 것이다. 또한, 본 연구를 통해 도출한 ‘협업을 통한 민 간 전문가 활용 강화, 보호관찰 전문성 강화를 통한 지도감독 질적 수준 향상, 인력 증원 및 업무량 현실화를 통한 두터운 보호관찰 실현’등 시사점은 한국 보호관찰 제도에도 유익한 정책 제언이 될 수 있을 것이다.