“Citizens should be protected from criminal minors,” remarked Han Dong Hun, the Korean Minister of Justice, in his interview with Yonhap News after visiting a juvenile correctional facility in Anyang on June 22. Criminal minor is a legal term referring to a juvenile (age 10 to 14 in Korea) who has committed a crime but is exempt from being punished on grounds of immaturity. With Han’s appointment as Minister of Justice on May 17, many legislations are being reviewed, one of the most prominent being the laws concerning underage offenders.

Han’s statement reflects the steadily rising figures of crimes committed by underage offenders. According to the Korean National Police Agency, 9,606 juvenile criminals were sent to court in 2021, a 50% increase from the figures in 2017. Despite this stark rise, the law excusing their crimes has never been revised since its establishment 60 years ago. Launching a task force (TF) for amendment, Han is considering whether to downgrade the minimum age the judicial system can charge criminal punishments to 12 or 13.

Under the pretext of “protecting the people from violent juvenile delinquency,” stated by the TF team in charge of revising the Juvenile Act, led by Han, people who agree with the potential revision adduce that criminal responsibility should be charged on criminals – regardless of their age. Other advocates assert that juveniles are physically and mentally similar to adults nowadays, criticizing the age limit as outdated. In light of the growing number of heinous crimes committed by minors, many are growing dubious of the unnecessary, excessive protections for these offenders only sentenced to limited measures such as probation or detention.

Whether lowering the minimum age of criminal punishment is an effective solution, however, is still in question. Some claim there is no direct correlation between the age of punishable minors and the decrease in juvenile crimes. A case that highlights the lack of a causal relationship between the two factors is Denmark’s increase in overall juvenile crime rates following the downgrade of the age for criminal minors back in 2010, as reported by The Economist.

Since the main objective of the Juvenile Law is rehabilitation, the revision of the law can be seen as a retrogression to this end. Many opposing the law’s revision contend that changing the definition of minors misses the fundamental prehension of its objective. To stop second offense rates and rehabilitate criminal minors, there should be more resources designated to resolving the cause of deviation – domestic problems, peer pressure, lack of social welfare, etc. Thus, should the government work on effectively decreasing the crime rate of criminal minors, they ought to prioritize lending social support to prevent the rise in potential deviants.

Even if criminal minors were to be downgraded, the revised legislation would quickly face feasibility issues. Since 63 percent of juvenile crime is committed by 13-year-olds according to Korean National Police Agency, taxes would likely have to be excessively appropriated to simply detain the increased number of criminal minors in facilities. As the TF team hasn’t announced the budget assessment for the law, concerns regarding inefficient finance allocation have been shed light upon.

Branding iron to juvenile criminals is no longer effective in preventing repeated crimes. Despite how rampant juvenile crime is becoming in society, lowering the age of criminal minors will hardly be effective in decreasing crime rates in the long run. Thus, society should embrace juveniles and mend the fundamental grounds of the social problem that leads to crimes instead of augmenting juvenile correctional facilities.