Police will introduce a system to randomly assign criminal cases to investigators to improve fairness in the case assignment process.
On the 26th, according to police and others, the Korean National Police Agency will push a "police criminal investigation response system reform plan" along with the enforcement of the amended Criminal Procedure Act.
First, cases received in the Criminal Justice Information System (KICS) will be assigned at random. Parties to a case will be allowed to file a recusal request against a police investigator, and the Office of Audit and Inspection will decide whether to accept it. The intent is to allow a change if the assigned officer's fairness is in doubt.
At the investigation stage, investigation reviewers, mainly outside legal experts, will be assigned to every police station nationwide to check and supplement cases handled by police. Investigation reviewers will confirm and review handled cases through KICS access and the like, and provide real-time advice on legal judgments and the appropriateness of evidence collection. The aim is to prevent "case burial," where cases are mishandled and buried.
Investigation command and management will also be strengthened. By expanding command competency evaluations and making spans of control more realistic to reinforce "Head of Team-centered investigations," and through constant guidance and reviews by higher agencies such as investigation review officers, oversight of case processing will be tightened. For major cases, senior officers at the superintendent senior/superintendent level will investigate directly.
Through second-half personnel moves, police plan to assign about 2,000 additional people to investigative units. To do this, they will temporarily adjust staffing in non-investigative units, such as by reallocating riot police units. Since June last year, about 1,900 investigative personnel have been reinforced over one year, and adding about 2,000 more will bring the total reinforcement to nearly 4,000.
At the case-closing stage, a police investigation human rights and internal affairs probe body will be set up under the National Police Commission of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to review cases such as non-indictment closure decisions made by police and unprocessed cases under administrative management. After reviews and probes, the National Police Commission may request reinvestigation and other measures from the head of the National Office of Investigation (NOI).
At the transfer and forwarding stage, dedicated units will be set up at each city and provincial police agency to monitor and manage prosecutors' reinvestigation and supplemental investigation requests in real time. To prevent repeated or delayed requests, the units will manage the case-processing flow by presenting investigative directions and opinions and providing investigative guidance. The plan is to improve the speed and completeness of case handling.