교도소 수용자에 대한 텔레비전 시청 제한의 현황과 개선방안 = Current Regulations and Improvement Plans on Restrictions on Prison Inmate`s Right to Watch Television

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Although the protection of prisoner`s human rights has been an issue consistently raised by academia members and civil rights activists, improvements have been slow. However, as prisoners recently began to actively submit their cases on imprisoned treatments to the Constitutional Court for constitutional complaints, various aspects of the infringement of human rights should be thoroughly scrutinized beyond the theoretical and abstract level. Among various infringements of prisoner`s human rights, the importance of the prisoner`s right to watch television (TV) may be easily overlooked since it is usually regarded as only a trivial issue. However, the simple act of watching TV holds significant meanings for prisoners that it may contribute to reducing stress, assisting in the rehabilitation process, and functioning as a means for prisoners to realize their right-to-know, right of access to information, and right to enjoy culture. Given the true meaning of liberal punishment imposed to restrict prisoner`s personal liberty, prisoner`s basic human rights should not be deprived of or restricted by the punishment. The authors of this paper intend to verify that the prisoner`s right to watch TV has not been treated well enough by the current laws, regulations, and the Constitutional Court decisions compared to its significance to prisoner`s lives by reviewing (a) the relevant laws and regulations, (b) current status of programs made for correction of prisoners, (c) the Constitutional Court`s decisions, and (d) the foreign cases. Through the analytical reviews, the problems vis-a-vis prisoner`s rights on watching TV and improvement plans thereof will be presented in three different aspects. First is the problem found in the relevant laws and regulations. Prisoners are now categorized and regulated to watch TV according to the criterion completely irrelevant to watching TV. Therefore, such regulations should be amended to discretionary ones that may be applied in consideration of each individual condition. Furthermore, such provisions that exist as punitive measures for restricting prisoner`s right of watching TV should be abolished or applied by taking account of the relativity with the profound grounds for punishment. Second is the problem found during the operation of corrective TV programs. Prisoners are now being deprived of the right to select TV-channel, because they are only permitted to watch a TV channel according to their gender, which is fixed to just two kinds of channels (general channel and channel for women), indicating that it is retrogressing from the goal for revitalization of such corrective channels. Therefore, the reexamination of the problems above as well as the expansion of space for watching TV is truly necessary. Third is the problems found in the Constitutional Court decision. The Constitutional Court has turned down many related cases on the grounds that the legal requirements for such constitutional complaints have not been satisfied, and it is also unlikely that the issue of watching TV will be considered as prisoner`s basic human rights. It is recommended that the Constitutional Court should reexamine its current stance of having the excessively strict standard on the legal requirement for constitutional complaint raised by prisoners in relation to TV watching and recognize that the prisoner`s right to watch TV is essential for protection of basic human rights under the Korean Constitution. If relevant governmental authorities begin to recognize the importance of prisoner`s right to watch TV and try to actively reform the current situation, human rights of prisoners will be protected more elaborately and eventually it will more effectively contribute to the correction of prisoners.