• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.211-239
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• 2020

This study examined characteristics and judges' judgments regarding sexual violence cases against individuals with intellectual disabilities by analyzing total 716 cases of court decision. Of 716 cases, 6.0% sentenced not guilty, 53.5% imprisonment, 36.7% suspended sentence. More than half of the victims had experienced sexual assault more than one time with the tendency of repeating being higher when the accused were relatives or acquaintances to the victims. In half of the total cases, the victims were not able to specify the time of incidents. Only in 20% of the cases, there was actual compulsion but in the remaining cases, there was no clear coercion used during the crimes. There are three issues regarding court's decision of sexual assault case against individuals with intellectually disabilities; (1) credibility of victims' statement, (2) inability of resist during the crimes, and (3) whether the accused were aware of the victims's disabilities. In the judgment of credibility of statement, consistency of statement was the criterion that was used most frequently, being followed by specificity of statement, motivation for false accusation, cognitive capacity of victim, and reports of statement validity analysis in the order. The most frequently used criterion of inability to resist was the victim's statement and attitude, followed by the statement and attitude of the accused, the victim's knowledge and understanding of sexuality in the order. Regarding to the awareness of disabilities on the part of the accused, the statement and attitude of the accused was most frequently used, the victims' communicative abilities, duration of relationship, and daily life competence in the order. There were no differences in the rulings and issues according to levels of disabilities and gender. When victims were under 13 credibility of statement became more argues but the awareness of disabilities less frequently than the cases of victims who were 13 or older.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-18
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• 2008

The present study examined the accuracy of polygraph tests through two types of statistical methods with unknown ground truth. One method evaluated the accuracy based on the rates of agreements between polygraph test results of crime suspects and prosecutors' indictment decisions for them. Those crime suspects were tested with polygraph by the Prosecutors' Office of the Republic of Korea between 2000 and 2004. The other method estimated the accuracy by using the latent class analysis based on the frequency distributions of the polygraph results and indictments during 2006. Excluding cases that were 'inconclusive' on the polygraph test, the study showed that the accuracy of the polygraph tests is .914 (SE=.004) for the 2000-2004 data, and .885 (SE=.021) for the 2006 data. With the inclusion of 'inconclusive' cases in the 2006 data, the results from the latent class analysis showed the accuracy in the range between .707 and .734 (SE=.027~.031), with false positives between .078 and .087 (SE=.019~.023), and false negatives between .029 and .078 (SE=.010~.023). The probability that the polygraph test correctly classifies subjects appeared to be in the range between .912 and .925 (SE=.013-.016) for those who lie, and in the range between .867 to .955 (SE=.011-.040) for those who tell the truth.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.331-339
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was examine the mediating effects of psychological flexibility and entrapment on the relationship between college students's life stress and adjustment to college life. A sample of 142 college students at a university located in Jeonju city completed self-report measures of life stress, psychological flexibility, entrapment and adjustment to college life. In order to examine the mediating effect, The collected data from college students were analyzed by the procedures prosposed by Baron and Kenny. Psychological flexibility and entrapment partially mediated the relationship between life stress and adjustment to college life, indicating that life stress directly affect adjustment to college life and indirectly affect adjustment to college life through psychological flexibility and entrapment. Finally, limitations of the results of this study and therapeutic interventions to prevent maladjustment by college students were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.10 no.spc
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• pp.69-86
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• 2004

A review of literature revealed that damaged self-confidence of men as social agents may be the primary, if not proximal, cause of domestic violence. Accumulated damages in social confidence and self-assurance may be moderated by action repertoire acquired during childhood, and mediated by adulthood circumstances such as marital discords and the lack of social support to result in the typical cycle of violence and subsequent feeling of remorse. The present treatments for the domestically violent men in Korea seem to be ineffective to reduce the number of incidents in the society because the treatments are viewed as punishments by the men, damage their social confidence further by stigmatizing them in the community, and destroy their social resources and support systems. It was suggested in this paper to reduce the role of law enforcement and correctional administration to rehabilitate the currently violent men. At the same time, it was also suggested for the Korean court to implement the paradigm of Therapeutic Jurisprudence in handling domestic violence cases. It was argued that the court should take active roles as a healing and rehabilitating agent by cooperating with non-government community establishments such as hospitals, universities and self-help organizations. The reasons and implications of those suggestions were discussed in detail.

• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.121-145
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• 2022

The current study applied the random forest algorithm to Korean crime victim survey data collected biennially between 2010 and 2018 to explore the relationship between crime/victim characteristics and the victim's criminal damages. A total of 3,080 cases including gender, age (life cycle stage), type of crime, perpetrator acquisition, repeated victimization, psychological damage (depression, isolation, extreme fear, somatic symptoms, interpersonal problems, moving out to avoid people, suicidal impulses, suicide attempts), and emotional changes after victimization (changes in self-protection confidence, self-esteem, confidence in others, confidence in legal institutions, and respect for Korean legal system/law) were analyzed. Considering the features of data that are difficult to apply traditional statistical techniques, this study implemented random forest algorithms to predict crime and victim characteristics using the victim's criminal damages (psychological damage and emotional change) and selected good predictors using VSURF function in VSURF package for R. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that the relationship between the type of crime and depression, extreme fear, somatic symptoms, and interpersonal problems, between perpetrator acquisition and somatic symptoms and interpersonal problems, and between repeated victimization and changes in respect for Korean legal system/law. Gender and life cycle stage (youth/adult/elderly) were found to be related to extreme fear and changes in self-protection confidence, respectively. However, more empirical evidence should be aggregated to explain the results as meaningful. The results of this study suggest that it is necessary to enhance the experts' knowledge and educate them on cases about the relationship between crime/victim characteristics and criminal damage. Strengthening their interview strategy and knowledge about law/rules were also needed to increase the effectiveness of the Korean victim assessment system.

• Journal of forensic and investigative science
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.32-51
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• 2007

Serial violent crimes have occurred more frequently. Additional attention is paid to relevant areas in which discussions has also increased. This study analyzed Young-cheol Yoo, serial killer case. Two of Yoo's crimes were studied for modus operandi. The cases selected were the premeditated break-in homicide of upper-class elderly people and the impulsive homicide of the Hwanghak-Dong street vendor. Crime motives, targets, times, places, means and methods were analyzed. Profiling techniques in Young-cheol Yoo cases were evaluated and the problems discovered during investigation were discussed. The followings are the findings of the analysis of the serial killer Yoo cases. Yoo exhibited a hatred toward the rich, the elderly, and women as well as a fear of diseases and death. Yoo's crime targets were the elderly residing in wealthy houses, street vendors and prostitutes. The numbers of victims were: 3 men and 5 women victims in 4 homicide cases involving the elderly residents in wealthy houses; one man in 1 street vendor homicide case 11 women in 11 prostitute homicide cases, so total 20 persons were murdered in 16 cases. The time of the crimes were between 10 am and noon in the homicide cases of the elderly and very late at night or early in the morning in the prostitute homicide cases. Means and methods facilitated include the use of a knife as a threat and a hammer made by Yoo to strike the head and face of victims. In the homicide cases involving the elderly, he attempted to disguise the crime scene as a burglary or committed arson to destroy the evidence; in the prostitute homicide cases, bodies were mutilated and buried in secret. 1) Generally each serial killer case has different characteristics, motives, and purposes; while some serial killer cases involve similar methods, others use different methods. Unlike other crimes, serial killers' characteristics and tastes are very different, so it is difficult to explain serial killings based on a specific model. It is important to accurately capture modus operandi of each serial killing and for detectives to familiarize themselves with them. The process of tracing and use of imagination which follows a serial killer's psychology and thought must be used to find out what kind of thoughts pushed the killer to commit the crime. In order to investigate and research difficult subjects such as serial killing, various methods, skills, and relevant knowledge should be studied, and institutional endeavors should go hand in hand with individual efforts.

• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2022

This study tested the effect of the verdict category of lay-participation trial in Korea on the legal decision of layperson and the role of representation of 'innocent' in the process. Representation of 'innocent' refers to a psychological threshold for deciding someone's innocence (no fault or sin) in a general sense. The functions as a threshold for a legal decision of 'beyond a reasonable doubt (BRD)' and the individual threshold (IT), regarded as a standard for judgment of guilt established by law and an estimate of an individual's threshold, respectively, were compared. This study used a 2×2 complete factorial design in which the verdict category (guilty/innocent vs. guilty/not guilty) and the defendant's likelihood of guilt (low vs. high) were manipulated. Data from 137 lay-people who voluntarily participated in the online experiment was analyzed. The experiment's procedure was in the order of measuring 'representation of innocent' and the likelihood of guilt of an accused, presenting one of four trial vignettes, and obtaining legal decisions (verdict confidence and estimation of the likelihood of guilt for the defendant). As a result, it was found that the verdict category did not significantly affect the legal decision of layperson. However, the guilty verdict rate of the 'guilty/innocent' condition tended to be higher than those of the 'guilty/not guilty' condition. The layperson's representation of 'innocent' and the verdict category had an interaction effect on the difference between BRD and IT (threshold change) at the significance level of .1. In the 'guilty/innocent' condition, the threshold change varying with layperson's representation of 'innocent' was larger than in the 'guilty/not guilty' condition. In comparing the function of BRD and IT, IT significantly predicted the lay person's legal decision at the significance level of .1 by interacting with the likelihood of guilt for the defendant. Therefore, it could be said that IT was a better threshold estimator than BRD. The implication of this study is that it provided experimental evidence for the effect of the verdict category of lay-participation trial in Korea, which is a problem often raised among lawyers, and suggested logical reasoning and empirical grounds for the psychological mechanism of the possible effect.