Since the late 1990’s, policies dealing with school violence have been established in Korea and in 2004 [ACT ON THE PREVENTION OF AND COUNTERMEASURES AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS] was legislated.Although several governmental and departmental school violence countermeasures have been arranged and implemented following this, school violence still remains a problem. In order to eliminate school violence, in February 2012, [comprehensive countermeasures for eliminating school violenc] and in July 2013, [comprehensive countermeasures focusing on the education field] were introduced. In accordance with these two comprehensive countermeasures, nine strategies have been reinforced as disciplinary actions to deal with aggressor of school violence. Incidents of school violence have been recorded on student records and various alternative educational opportunities have been provided for the aggressor.
Nevertheless, the effectiveness of these new countermeasures is not verified; the new proposal simply repeats previous policies, and nothing more. It is necessary to analyze the effectiveness of each policy related to school violence in order to develope these policies. There is criticism that the school violence countermeasures do not fulfill their aim which is to guide the aggressors onto the right path, nor do they isolate them from society. In order to guide perpetrators onto the right path and educate them, well-established policies should be implemented by examining the changes in existing school violence policies and the effectiveness of each policy. In accordance with this demand, in this study we have examined the effectiveness of the current school policies towards violence and suggested policy implications in order to improve the countermeasures related to aggressor of school violence.
Research into the actual conditions of school violence through conducting surveys twice a year and arranging whole governmental countermeasures has led to increasing student awareness of the seriousness of school violence, for example, minor classroom incident would be considered to be a form of school violence and subjected to police intervention. This process has led the school to immediately counteract incidents of school violence and has been acknowledged in a positive way.
Immediate intervention has been made possible by installing 117 Centers and by diversifying the way of reporting incidents of school violence. According to [ACT ON THE PREVENTION OF AND COUNTERMEASURES AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS], intervention and problem-solving approaches should be made in pursuing an aim with education as the principle object. However, standardized police intervention and over-criminalization against minor school behavior that could have been resolved at school level has led to excessive police intervention. Reinforcing the inspection procedure of the committee on school violence enhances publicity of the problem of school violence and leads school teachers, parents, and related field experts to actively engage in the problem-solving process. School violence conflict resolution induces the aggressors to self-reflection and provides help to both aggressors and victims in problem-solving. However, since a majority of members of the committee for school violence are parents and there has been a lack of help from related field experts, the committee has been unable to judge the gravity of offenses of school violence as well as determine the appropriateness of punishment for the aggressors. Also, there are limitations that in that the conflict resolution procedures for school violence mainly deals with the issue of compensation for damages and even deepens conflict between aggressors and victims by applying the conflict resolution process before the fact of relevance has been determined.
[ACT ON THE PREVENTION OF AND COUNTERMEASURES AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS] regulated nine types of disciplinary actions for perpetrators of school violence. This Act has been positively uated, since it includes various approaches applicable in and out of school and includes efforts for environmental improvement. In addition, the disciplinary actions deal with the aggressors of school violence as subjects requiring treatment so providing combined special education with psychotherapy is of help to guide the aggressor, because there are no detailed regulations for the disciplinary procedures and it is difficult to gain cooperation from the related departments, disciplinary actions such as service to a school, service to the society, and completing a special educational course etc. are not used to help the aggressors. It is important for each facility to develop its own specialized education program designed for their aggressor of school violence. In regard to the disciplinary actions, some indicated that the disciplinary actions did not give an opportunity for the perpetrators to reflect on their misbehaviour and the disciplinary actions which induce the aggressors to apologize to the victims in written form violate the aggressor’s freedom of conscience guaranteed by the constitution. Also, policies which allows schools to transfer the aggressors to another school and expel them from the school may lead them to drop out of school entirely. The disciplinary action of recording incidents of school violence on their school records affects their college entrance examination scores and even though there is no criminal record for the cases of school violence, recording the cases on the school records has a labeling effect. Although retrial and administrative appeal in cases of school violence would give the aggressors a chance to defend themselves, because of the restriction that they only have the right of retrial when transferring to another school or being expelled from their current school, the aggressors would be deprived of their constitutional rights.
Compared to the United States, German, and Japanese policies against school violence, Korea's policies have a merit in seeking consistency because they have been ruled by a single legal framework and whole governmental countermeasures. However, Korea's policies related to aggressors of school violence are moving to focus excessively on punishment and there is no precise criteria and guidelines for applying the disciplinary actions. Therefore, individualized approaches have not been implemented according to the gravity of the offenses such as bullying, or physical violence.
This study have conducted research into effectiveness of the disciplinary programs implemented for aggressor of school violence at Wee Centers, Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Centers, and Youth Detention Centers. The study has found that regardless of the type of Center, participants who have experienced disciplinary programs have changed their attitude toward a desirable direction in ‘self-esteem’, ‘self-control’, ‘career and future values’, and ‘family relations’ and high school participants have positively changed attitude in ‘self-esteem’. However, the study participants have a lower expectation for the effectiveness of the policies against school violence than general students. Therefore, a regular uation of the effectiveness of policies against school violence should be implemented and efforts to develop disciplinary actions need to be made.
Though a therapeutic approach has been introduced to policies on school violence, decisions dealing with the perpetrators still based on the notion of isolating them. These policies should be developed to guide the aggressors to the right path and to improve their home, school, and community environment in order to lead them away from being involved in crime.
According to the significance of each incident of school violence, different conflict resolution procedures need to be applied. For example, cases involving severe violence should be pursued legally through immediate police intervention.
While, minor cases such as bullying and cyber bullying, the committee for school violence needs to focus on recovering the relationship between the aggressors and victims in order to overcome the problem.
To improve the professionalism of the committee for school violence, city and provincial education offices should organize specialist teams to deal with cases of violence and should assign their specialist team to regional school units in order to help the committees. Furthermore, commissions should be held where cases need to be fully investigated, when both of victims and aggressors agree to holding a commission and when factual relevance and the effect of sentencing of cases is being determined. Also, these professional teams in the city and provincial education offices should be responsible for supervising the committees on school violence.
The regulations relative to the application criteria of [ACT ON THE PREVENTION OF AND COUNTERMEASURES AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS] related to the aggressors should be specified. Legal requirements and grounds should be clarified for transferring and expelling aggressor of school violence. Only severe actions such as suspension of attendance, transference, and exclusion need to be recorded on the school records of the aggressors.
An educational disciplinary institute should be established for aggressors of school violence. In order to increase the effectiveness of disciplinary education programs, long-term educational programs should be developed which should be assessed and improved regularly. Results of outstanding examples of program implementation need to be shared. Lastly, the opportunity for retrial and administrative appeal should be enlarged to guarantee equal rights for aggressors of school violence.