COVID-19 first broke out in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and soon spread all over the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) responded by announcing a public health emergency on January 30, 2020. When the disease began to spread faster, the organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Three years have passed since then, and the COVID-19 pandemic still persists.

Korea was also hit by the pandemic in January 2020, when a Chinese visitor was diagnosed with COVID-19. The number of COVID-19 patients skyrocketed in subsequent months, with mass infections hitting care hospitals, correctional facilities, and communal living facilities. 

The prolonged pandemic necessitated fundamental changes to the criminal justice system as well as our daily experiences. Korea had to adapt its criminal justice system to the transition from ‘face-to-face’ to ‘non-face-to-face,’ while reforming the relevant systems.

In fact, the unparalleled transmissibility of COVID-19 means that the disease has particularly devastating effect on correctional facilities, as these are communal living facilities. Therefore, the spread of COVID-19 poses a grave threat to inmates living in crowded and confined environments, as well as correctional officers living with them. In December 2020, the threat was realized in the form of the mass infection at Seoul Dongbu Detention Center. More than a thousand inmates at the center were diagnosed with COVID-19, and some of them died as a result. The mass infection all but paralyzed the center’s operation. The disease has had serious impact on correctional administration, including vastly increased workloads at most correctional institutions across Korea and the discontinuation of most administrative services at the Korea Correctional Service. In particular, the pandemic put a stop to most inmate treatments requiring participation from families, correctional committee members, technical instructors, and others outside the facilities. Pretrial inmates could not meet their attorneys, and various other problems surfaced with regards to the treatment of pretrial inmates, foreign inmates, elderly inmates, and inmates suffering from severe conditions. Thus, COVID-19 posed a new challenge to the corrections sector, which was to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at correctional facilities to protect the health and human rights of inmates, while achieving the purpose of corrections and rehabilitation. 

The pandemic also posed problems for community-based treatment as well as facility-based treatment. Convicts on probation live among the other members of the society, and thus have a better chance of avoiding crowded environments and improving their living arrangements, with relatively free access to medical services. However, the pandemic disrupted the implementation of face-to-face probation activities, as well as the application for, and execution of, community services orders and program attendance orders. Failure to properly implement face-to-face probation activities meant reduced rehabilitation effect on convicts on probation, as well as higher risk of criminal victimization for the general public. As such, ensuring timely and effective probation despite the pandemic emerged as one of the new challenges for probation. 

This study was planned and carried out for the purpose of proposing criminal policy responses designed to adapt corrections and probation to the spread of COVID-19 and other possible epidemiological crisis in the future. As criminal policy alternatives to epidemiological risks, we sought to propose ways to reduce 3C (crowded, close, and closed) environments, prevent infection in ways suitable for the environments at correctional facilities, protect the inmate’s right to healthy life while achieving the purpose of corrections and improving it’s effectiveness, and realizing reasonable correctional practices for the safety and health of correctional employees. In addition, we sought to propose probation practices designed to rehabilitating convicts on probation and ensure the safety of the general public while preparing against epidemiological risks. 

We proposed criminal policy responses designed to adapt corrections and probation practices to the spread of COVID-19 and other possible epidemiological crisis in the future. 

We propose the following measures to adapt correctional practices. The proposed measures are grouped under two categories: measures during epidemics or pandemics, and measures in normal times. The former category includes: establish response guidelines for correctional facilities and engage experts; establish a report system for on-site monitoring; expand non-face-to-face treatment activities; increase telephone use and adopt video phones; increase video trials and investigations; minimize inmate transfer among facilities; and disclose information on infectious diseases. The measures for normal times include: develop standard designs for correctional facilities; build correctional medical wards; address overcrowding at facilities; and increase single-inmate cells. As for measures to adapt probation practices to epidemic and pandemic situations, we propose the following measures: 

identify and address issues with non-face-to-face supervision to ensure harmonious implementation of face-to-face and non-face-to-face practices; increase program attendance orders that combine the benefits of both types; increase investments and support for probation facilities (more spaces for interviews and community service activities within probation offices); enhance support for overworked probation office employees and enhance collaboration with the judiciary to develop ways to address overworking of probation office employees; enhance differentiated responses between high-risk and low-risk criminals and address social and economic inequalities to promote probation practices tailored to different types of criminals. 

The end of the COVID-19 pandemic is nowhere in sight. Even if it finally ends, another pandemic may sweep the world anytime in the future. We expect that the measures for corrections and probation practices proposed in this study will protect the health of inmates, convicts on probation, and the relevant employees, help us achieve the purpose of corrections and probation, improve their efficacy, and ultimately keep the people and the society healthy and sound.