일본의 자치경찰제도와 시사점-주요 특성 및 운용상황에 대한 분석을 중심으로- = Local Autonomous Police System in Japan and its Implication

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

As part of a comparative legal study, this article aims to identify the institutional characteristics and implications of Japan's local autonomous police system. For a more accurate understanding of Japan's local autonomous police system, the formation process of the modern police system during the Japanese enlightenment period after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the introduction of the local autonomous police system after the defeat in 1945 were examined. Subsequently, focusing on the current Japan's local autonomous police system, which was reorganized in 1954, the main characteristics and operation status were reviewed.
Japan's local autonomous police system was introduced in the process of transplanting an American-style administrative and judicial system with the motto of democratization of Japanese society by GHQ which was occupied by Japan after the defeat. The local autonomous police system, which was introduced for the first time after the defeat in 1945, was a local police system at the level of basic local governments based on American democracy. After the occupation of the allied forces ended in 1954, however, it unified the national police and the local autonomous police transformed into a form based on the local police at the metropolitan autonomous unit. The causes of institutional reform presented in the process were the tasks that were dealt with in the old local autonomous police system, such as the lack of human and material financial resources resulting from small local autonomous police, and the unfair exercise of police power caused by maintenance or collusion with local forces. Korea's local autonomous police system has many characteristics of incidental legislation under the pretext of the necessity of checking the police following the prosecution reform and the investigative power reform legislation. This is a fundamental difference in the background of its introduction compared to Japan's local autonomous police system.
There is also controversy over whether Japan's current local police system is an autonomous police system in a pure sense. Compared to the basic level local autonomous police system under the old police law, it may be criticized as a practical return to the centralized national police system before the defeat. Although the public security committee system based on democracy is also granted personnel rights or inspection rights, many voices point out the lack of practical authority or limitations in human composition. However, from a comparative legal point of view, the things that can be evaluated as the values or ideologies that can be implemented in Japan's local autonomous police system include the public security committee system as a neutral body that can reflect people's will and exclude political influence, the democratic operation of the police, and the securing of economies of scale and security expertise through local police at the metropolitan level. The maintenance of the indirect intervention system of local government heads or local councils, securing fairness in the exercise of local police power through direct command and supervision of the autonomous police by the state police, the development, distribution and utilization of unified police resources nationwide through command and supervision of the autonomous police system, and checks through decentralization of police power.