미국 형사사법학의 연구경향과 주요 현안

초록

Criminal justice in the United States was separated from criminology in the 1960s as a discipline focusing on the functions and roles of criminal justice institutions, and it grew rapidly with the support of the U.S. federal government, and by the end of the 20th century had established itself as an independent field distinct from sociology and political science. This study selected four major US criminal justice journals listed in the SSCI to understand research trends in the field, and then selected and reviewed 33 of the most academically and socially influential papers published in these journals since 2000. As a result of the review, it was found that the proportion of papers on police was the highest, suggesting that police science, which was the origin of US criminal justice, is still a matter of high public interest. It also confirmed that empirical research rather than theoretical research has become the norm in the US, with quantitative research overwhelming qualitative research. In addition, it was found that contemporary U.S. criminal justice studies has problems such as the difficulty in maintaining its own identity distinct from criminology, the decline of interdisciplinary or qualitative research, the separation from criminal law and procedure studies, and the gap between theory and actual policy. This general survey of U.S. criminal justice studies leads to the conclusion that criminal justice studies in Korea, in which legal studies plays an important role in contrast to the case of the United States, needs to promote interdisciplinary research, and that there are some opportunities for academic exchange or cooperation between Korea and the United States in the field of criminal justice.

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