Police and prosecutors agree to transfer over 100 unsolved cases for direct investigation

Following the transition to a new criminal justice system, the police decided to take over about 100 unsolved cases directly investigated by the prosecution.

Separately, requests for a supplementary investigation by the Public Prosecution Office for cases transferred to the police will also be accepted sequentially.

According to reports from Yonhap News on the 5th, the police and prosecutors agreed to transfer to the police about 100 cases in which prosecutors had initiated investigations themselves but judged it difficult to complete them within the 90-day period due to the system transition.

In the new criminal justice system, prosecutors cannot directly investigate, but can continue necessary investigations for up to 90 days in cases that are unavoidable due to their nature or where the statute of limitations is approaching.

It was decided to proceed sequentially starting from the 2nd, but it was found that no cases had actually been handed over to the police as of this morning.

The police expected the transfer to begin on the 6th, when the holiday ends.

When each public prosecution office or branch office sends a case to the police station in its jurisdiction, the police plan to review the scale and nature of the case and entrust it to the investigation team of the front-line police station or the metropolitan investigation team of the city/provincial police office.

Among the cases transferred by the police, requests for supplementary investigations for cases for which the prosecution has not completed their disposition are also expected to be sequentially received.

However, as each local public prosecution office and branch office must determine the need for additional investigation on a case-by-case basis, the overall size of the request has not yet been calculated.

The police already have a lot of long-term cases.

As of August this year, there were 46,793 cases lasting more than three months remaining in 262 police stations across the country.

Among these, 6,871 cases were over 6 months old.

In principle, requests for supplementary investigations must be faithfully implemented and the results notified within one month from the date of receipt.

The burden on front-line investigators may increase as additional investigations must be conducted according to deadlines while processing existing cases.

The police requested that cases be sent sequentially so that requests for supplementary investigations would not be concentrated all at once, and the prosecution reportedly agreed to this.

For cases requiring supplemental investigation, the Investigation Cooperation Team, a dedicated management department of the provincial and provincial police offices, will manage the implementation status.

The police also took over all of the approximately 2,000 wanted cases managed by the prosecution.

In most cases, new warrants have been issued and the process of being wanted in the name of the police has been completed, and the very few cases awaiting warrant issuance are expected to complete the process soon.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed that no police investigation case had been transferred to the Serious Crimes Investigation Office (Serious Crimes Investigation Office) until this morning.

The police and the Central Investigation Agency are continuing discussions on case transfer procedures.