Investigation Reform Committee urges police to hire at least 100 lawyers a year, curb inquiries and solicitations about investigations

[Financial News] A proposal has been recommended to hire at least 100 people with law licenses as police officers each year for the next five years to strengthen the legal expertise of police investigations. Measures are also being pursued to prohibit police officers from making inquiries or requesting favors about cases they are not handling, and to require investigators who receive such inquiries or requests to report them.
The Police Investigation Reform Committee (PIRC) said on the 6th that it had reviewed and approved the “Recommendations to Strengthen Fairness and Investigative Capabilities in Police Investigations” and submitted them to the National Police Agency. The second set of recommendations, following measures to strengthen protection for crime victims announced in August, contains 12 recommendations in total: nine to strengthen investigative fairness and three to strengthen investigative capabilities.
The committee first recommended hiring at least 100 police officers with law licenses each year for the next five years and assigning them to investigative departments to strengthen the legal expertise of police investigations.
There are currently 311 people with law licenses in the police force, less than 1% of the 38,250 investigative police officers overall. The committee determined that each of the 262 police stations nationwide needs at least two to four legal experts.
A committee official explained, “We determined that three or four should be assigned to each police station. We need to hire at least around 500 more, but it would be impossible to do so all at once. The idea was that we hoped efforts would be made to hire them in stages, with 100 as the minimum each time.”
The committee also recommended assigning attorney-qualified “investigative review officers” to local police stations. These officers review legal issues during the opening, progress and conclusion of investigations, and assess matters such as the appropriateness of evidence collection and the legality of investigative procedures and content. The committee said that assignments should take each station’s caseload into account, but that at least one officer per station was appropriate.
Since 2021, the police have operated an investigative review officer system, primarily staffed by people with investigative experience, and at one point assigned between 677 and 710 officers. The program was later significantly scaled back following criticism over a shortage of frontline investigators and inefficiencies from conducting a second review in addition to managers’ reviews. Currently, 45 officers serve in the system at metropolitan and provincial police agencies.
The recommendations also included measures to strengthen internal controls and improve investigative fairness. The committee recommended revising relevant regulations to prohibit anyone other than the case handler or the officer directing the investigation from making inquiries or requesting favors concerning a case’s progress, content or handling, and to require investigators who receive such inquiries or requests to report them immediately. Police officers who fail to report them would be subject to disciplinary action even if they did not respond. Police officers who make inquiries about a case would also be deemed to have violated the code of conduct simply by making the inquiry, regardless of whether they received information.
The committee also proposed requiring superiors to issue investigative directives only through electronic documents using the Korea Information System of Criminal Justice Services (KICS). Even in exceptional cases where a directive is given orally or by phone, the aim is to clarify whether it was issued and where responsibility lies by requiring an electronic investigative directive to be filed by the following day, or as soon as a system disruption is resolved.
The committee also called for stronger controls over cases involving family members of police officers. Citing recent cases including the Jang Yun-gi case, it recommended ensuring that cases involving officers’ family members are handled by another police agency under recusal rules, and considering assigning serious crimes to other investigative bodies, such as the Serious Crime Investigation Agency, in the future. Related legislation would need to be amended to implement this measure.
The committee also proposed establishing a system tentatively called “Search My Case,” allowing complainants and accusers to check the progress of their cases online. The system would let them check whether evidence or documents they submitted had been received, how far the investigation had progressed and whether they had been notified of the outcome, without compromising the confidentiality of investigations.
The recommendations also called for separating the intake and registration of case-related documents from investigative work and assigning those tasks to general administrative officers who do not conduct investigations. They recommended clarifying the legal basis for establishing the Police Investigation Deliberation Committee and making all its members external members. They also included having the National Office of Investigation hold formal meetings at least twice a year with crime victim groups and regularly review the reasons for requests for supplementary investigations, whether they were fulfilled and how long implementation took, and the quality of their completion.
The committee also called for improving working conditions to prevent investigative personnel from leaving and to attract highly capable staff. It recommended prioritizing top investigators for cases involving crimes against socially vulnerable groups, including women, young people and people with disabilities, and providing personnel incentives such as systematic training and special promotions. It also urged improvements to working conditions for all investigative police officers, including personnel policies that incorporate special promotions.
Committee chair Kim Nam-jun said, “Fairness and capability in investigations are not competing values. Investigative agencies should not be made to bear responsibility without having the necessary capabilities, nor should oversight be weakened simply because they are capable.”
The National Police Agency said it takes seriously the public’s interest in and concerns about police investigations amid the restructuring of the criminal justice system, and intends to actively accept the recommendations. It plans to draw up detailed implementation plans and a timeline and report them to the committee.
[email protected] Kim Ye-ji Reporter