An Exploration of the Devolved Police System in England and Wales and its Implications for Korean Autonomous Police System

Abstract

Korea is scheduled to implement a local autonomous police system from the second half of 2021. The core idea of this massive organizational shift is to hand some power from the national police over to local police and within which the local police will be under the control of local governments. This shift was not initiated of itself, but forms a part of the strategy to rebalance the powers of the criminal justice institutions. More specifically, this change was linked to a drive to reduce police power overall. There is however a perception that this development represents merely a ‘transitional’ model rather than a long term plan. In addition, there has been no prior assessment as to whether the new ‘tripartite system’ can be expected to uphold the core values arising from the implementation of the local police system. In this paper we begin by exploring the successes and failures of the devolved police system in England and Wales and identifying any implications from this for Korea. Based on this we try to anticipate possible problems and future directions for the successful implementation of the Korean local police system.