Citation

Korean Assoc. Public Saf. Crim. Just. Rev. 2017; 26(3): 137-164.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Korean Association of Public Safety and Criminal Justice)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In South Korea, a total of 2,730 police officers were injured and assaulted in the line of duty from 2011 to 2015, with an average of 546 officers per year. If compared with other countries, the ratio of assaulted police officers to the total number of police officers in South Korea is 8 times as high as that of Germany; about 20 times as high as England and Wales; and approximately 6 times as high as the United States. Assaults on police officers directly link to physical health and occupational stress of individual officers, which has a possibility to bring about greater side effects to the police organization as a whole and even to the entire country such as economic loss. Despite the significance they hold, there has been little interest in the occupational injuries of police officers in the press and academia of South Korea. Past studies include descriptive analysis on injuries of police officers, researches on the correlation between violent assaults and occupational stress, and discussions on ways to improve the compensation policy for occupational injuries of police officers. However, there has been few cases of detailed analysis on assaults or theoretical approaches to their causes. Studies done in other countries, on the other hand, perceive a police officer as the victim of assaults and take a criminological approach to categorize the attack on police officers as an act of violence. Empirical studies, of course, have been active with regard to the subject. In Korea, it is necessary to analyze the cause of assaults on police officers and establish preemptive measures. Through these researches, it is expected to prevent physical and/or mental damages to individual officers and unnecessary losses in the police organization. This will further lead to the protection of national security from the threats caused by assaults on police officers. To support these research efforts, a change in the perception of assaulted police officers is inevitable. In addition, beyond simply counting and announcing the number of assaulted and killed officers, it is necessary to standardize and classify individual cases of assaults like the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) report released by the FBI in the States so that future studies can be encouraged.

Language: ko

Keywords

Police; Assaulted Police; Injury on Duty; Occupational Accidents Cost; Protect the Protectors