One in Three Police Arrest-Warrant Applications Rejected by Prosecutors; Rate Tops 30% for the First Time

[Financial News] This year, prosecutors rejected more than 30% of the arrest-warrant applications submitted by police without seeking the warrants from the court, marking the first time the rate has surpassed 30%. The rejection rate for search-and-seizure warrants has also risen, prompting frontline police officers to say that prosecutors are scrutinizing warrant applications more strictly than before.
According to the Public Prosecution Office on the 4th, 9,186 of the 26,961 arrest-warrant applications submitted by police from January through August were rejected. The rejection rate was 34.1%, marking the first time it has exceeded 30% on an annual basis.  This was approximately 38.7% higher than the average rejection rate from 2021 to 2025.
The police arrest-warrant rejection rate has risen steadily in recent years. In 2021, when investigative powers were reallocated between the police and prosecutors, the rate entered the 20% range for the first time at 22.8%. It stood at 23.2% in 2022, 25.0% in 2023, 24.7% in 2024 and 26.8% last year. The increase accelerated significantly this year.
The situation is similar for search-and-seizure warrants. From January through August, the rejection rate for search-and-seizure warrants submitted by police was 19.1%. That was notably higher than the 10.7% to 13.7% range recorded from 2021 to 2025.
Frontline police officers have responded by questioning whether prosecutors' warrant reviews become more stringent whenever the investigative system changes, such as through adjustments to the investigative powers of the police and prosecution. In the past, police and prosecutors were seen as working together on investigations, with prosecutors identifying specific deficiencies and requesting corrections even when a warrant application was incomplete. Recently, however, supplemental requests have reportedly continued even for arrest warrants involving cases with no apparent problems or search-and-seizure warrants for simple cases, citing difficult-to-understand reasons such as the need to add case precedents.
Some analysts attribute prosecutors' more cautious approach to seeking arrest warrants to the burden of unsolved cases. If police transfer a suspect in custody to prosecutors, prosecutors must decide within 10 days whether to indict the suspect, meaning that seeking an arrest warrant could lead to an additional workload for prosecutors later.
Some in legal circles also argue that the abolition of prosecutors' investigative powers has changed the way prosecutors approach police investigations. Rather than actively cooperating with police during the investigative stage, prosecutors have begun scrutinizing the results of police investigations more strictly with a view to maintaining prosecutions in the future.
Because prosecutors must maintain prosecutions based on the results of police investigations, their reviews of those investigations are becoming more stringent. As a result, some expect warrant rejections to increase further.


[email protected] Seo Ji-yoon Reporter