Launching a Reform Task Force and Overhauling the Investigation System... The Success of Police Reform Hinges on Sustainability

[Financial News] The focus of police reform is shifting from internal organizational renewal to a broader approach encompassing public and frontline participation and stronger investigative capabilities. Following a series of cases handled inadequately, the police are overhauling their management and supervision systems while also reorganizing personnel and investigative institutions ahead of the implementation of the amended Criminal Procedure Act of the Republic of Korea. Experts said that, for these measures to improve the quality of investigations and public trust, the police must secure and retain experienced personnel, strengthen education and training, overhaul command and supervision systems, and ensure that the reform continues over time.
According to police officials on the 11th, the Korean National Police Agency will launch the Public Participation and Frontline Engagement Police Reform Task Force this week and introduce a series of measures to reflect public and frontline voices in the reform process. Under the proposed 100 Days of Police Reform with the People initiative, the agency will hold nationwide public listening sessions and collect opinions online through November. In mid-December, it will hold a 100-day briefing to disclose implementation progress and future plans.
The police will also introduce a proposed Citizen Jury on Police Policies, allowing citizens to compare and deliberate on police measures concerning issues of significant public concern. At the frontline level, officers will be encouraged to identify blind spots and problems in their work through proposed initiatives such as the Magnifying Glass Project and The Frontline Man Goes. The aim is to move away from a top-down process in which reform proposals are developed within the police and sent to frontline units, and instead reflect public and frontline views from the stage of identifying reform tasks.
The police are also moving quickly to strengthen investigative capabilities in preparation for changes to the criminal justice system. Ahead of the implementation of the amended Criminal Procedure Act of the Republic of Korea, more than 2,000 personnel will be added to investigative departments in the second half of the year. The agency has also revised related regulations, including the Police Investigation Rules and the Regulations on Crime Investigations. It is pursuing stronger personnel policies and investigator training to prevent the loss of highly capable investigators.
Experts are focusing less on the scale of these measures than on how they will operate in the field. Because investigations require experience and expertise, simply increasing personnel will not immediately improve investigative quality. The police must secure and retain experienced investigators while providing education and training so that newly assigned personnel can quickly develop professional expertise.
Strengthening command and supervision is also considered essential to reform. Rather than concentrating responsibility for case handling on individual officers, a system in which commanders jointly review major decisions and share responsibility could provide an additional check against erroneous judgments and improve the effectiveness of management and supervision.
Yeom Gun-woong, a professor in the Department of Police and Fire Administration at U1 University, said, "The police must comprehensively consider safeguards for command and supervision, sufficient personnel recruitment, and measures to raise the capabilities of newly recruited investigators through education and training if they lack experience."
Balancing stronger accountability with the need to preserve initiative in the field will also determine the effectiveness of the reform. Experts say the police should hold officers accountable for clear wrongdoing while specifying the scope of responsibility and protective measures so that frontline personnel do not avoid taking proactive action because they fear the consequences of their decisions.
Some have also stressed that the reform must not remain a short-term fix prompted by specific cases. The proposed public listening sessions and citizen jury should not be ends in themselves; instead, collected opinions must lead to actual institutional improvements, followed by a system for reviewing whether those changes have been implemented. Coordination will also be necessary to prevent individual tasks from becoming fragmented as multiple reform bodies operate simultaneously.
In the longer term, the police must create organizational conditions that allow officers to focus on their core duties in the field. Beyond adding personnel, education must be sustained within the actual work system, and staffing and organizational factors that make proactive work difficult in the field must also be examined. Lee Woong-hyuk, a professor in the Department of Police Science at Konkuk University, emphasized, "Reform means creating conditions that allow the police to focus on citizens in the field." He added, "There is a need to shift to a paradigm in which education and work are linked."
[email protected] Kim Ye-ji Reporter