Only 18% of Crimes Committed with Abnormal Motives Lead to Treatment Custody Requests
Incidents of rampage with weapons committed by people suffering from mental illness continue to occur. It has been revealed that prosecutors requested 'treatment custody'—a system that protects the public by treating and isolating dangerous mentally ill offenders—in only 18.1% of such cases.
On the 13th, a knife rampage took place at a food court in a multi-use commercial building in Guwol-dong, Namdong-gu, Incheon. The perpetrator, identified as Mr. A (59), who was arrested on charges of attempted murder, was found to have been taking medication for a mental illness. Kim Su-min (26), an office worker living in Bundang, said, "It reminded me of the Seohyeon Station stabbing incident from a few years ago."
According to police and the Ministry of Justice on the 14th, Mr. A was sentenced to four years in prison in August 2015 for attempting to murder his ex-wife after she refused to reunite with him, and was also ordered to wear an electronic ankle monitor for 10 years and restricted from leaving his residence at night. He committed the crime immediately after completing an interview with his probation officer and addiction counseling with an external expert.
After the Sillim Station stabbing committed by Cho Seon (then 33) on July 21, 2023, and the Seohyeon Station stabbing by Choi Won-jong (then 22) on August 3 of the same year, and the recurrence of indiscriminate attacks, police launched preemptive crackdowns on weapon possession in public places and crime threat posts online.
An analysis by researchers at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice of 244 crimes with abnormal motives committed between 2019 and 2024 found that more than half of the perpetrators suffered from mental illness. The top motive was unprovoked crimes committed while intoxicated (79 cases, 32.4%), followed by psychiatric problems such as auditory hallucinations and delusions (67 cases, 27.5%), venting accumulated anger (46 cases, 18.9%), misinterpreting others' intentions (21 cases, 8.6%), and pessimism or grievances about reality (18 cases, 7.4%).
Even when a mental illness background is confirmed, cases often do not lead to treatment. Among the security measures prosecutors requested for offenders with mental illness-related abnormal motives, treatment custody accounted for 18.1%, electronic device attachment orders 11.1%, and probation 1.4%.
New York State in the United States operates a 'mental health warrant' system in which police or attending physicians first hospitalize people with severe mental illness, with a court decision following afterward. Under Germany's placement-for-treatment law, offenders sentenced to more than 10 years in prison can be involuntarily committed by court order if they meet criteria for mental disorder and danger to public safety.
Yun Jeong-suk, a senior research fellow at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice, said, "There is a need to shift from punishment that places blame on the crime itself to management and treatment of the mental illness that causes crime," adding, "A judicial hospitalization system should be introduced to smoothly integrate mentally ill individuals who show signs of violent risk into the mental health system."
