A Criminological Review of Issues Related to Game Addiction

Abstract

In the modern society, an action related to addiction or overindulgence, in many cases, become the Criminal Law issues. Typically an action that has addictive qualities as in the case of drug and gambling addiction is classed actus reus(elements of a crime), or become the Excuse in the Criminal Law(exemption reason of a criminal responsibility) of other crimes, or is considered as the motive of a crime for aggravating circumstances in the assessment of the culpability. Many people are exposed a lot of time in the game from an early age, which means that the growing possibility that many people who get addicted to games. In order to continue the game which is played by someone, damage case on cyber space is generated that swindles game money or illegally trade game items or gives damage to other account. And it may be placed on the extension of the school violence including forcibly raising the character level in games by treating the weak students harshly in order to further strengthen its position in the game. Beyond the type of initial crime in cyberspace that the data manipulation of the bank``s computer network and stealing and injury of information of files in the personal computer that came down from the past, recently crime in cyberspace has been expanding in many ways such as an infringement of personal information through searching for all of the information in circulation on the Internet, an infringement of personal rights in network, fraud and violence using anonymity, an infringement of copyright, dissemination of obscene materials, such as cyber-terrorism, and it can also belong to the kind of extended crime in cyberspace by game addiction such as fraud, words of violence, personal information cheating and so on. Currently we located on conflicting situation with the side of game industrial development and the side of prevention of game addiction. In fact, it can be also understood if the criminal policy responses only to the combined focus on the harmful effects of game addiction, reciprocal value of the game industry promotion can be collide with the policy. As part of this matter, the Four Major Addiction Bill was made the point at issue, in fact, is not a state such a disputed point were completely concluded, we also required to specify the coding education in the basic education curriculum referring to coding education fever in Northern Europe. And as in the case of Germany, we try to give a impression that game is also one of the achievements of development using IT technology by parallel to the coding education from childhood, and focus on to foster the healthy game cultural and social recognition that not a target of addiction issue, so that we will be able to take all of the utilitarian of prevention of game addiction and game industrial development. It is easy to analyze the cause of crimes related to the game addiction by using the Social Learning Theory and the Social Bonding Theory in criminological theories. As it can be seen from the above theories, a crime before it happens, we can know that human is ultimately formed social relationships, and it is most important to understand the existence that human has a character will be made through education. This is suggestive of the possibility to improve learning action through education policy. Therefore, because the fundamental reason of the collision with each side is ultimately based on social-psychologic recognition, making social relationships and educating are, but the work takes time, the most desirable direction of social policy for improving the recognition, that is the best penal policy.