Archiwum Kryminologii (Archives of Criminology)

7-33

Authors: Dirk Van Zyl-Smit, Sonja Snacken

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61-72

Authors: Leon Tyszkiewicz

The article presents a series of statements concerning criminology: it is a autonomous and multidisciplinary science; it should be separated from the criminal policy and merged with the study of social pathology. The distinction between descriptive and explaining criminology is of certain importance. In the latter, the problem of assumed paradigm is of particular importance. Approximately since l960, in social sciences and in criminology the antinaturalistic paradigm prevails. Its nature is raises controversies. The author thinks that the antinaturalistic paradigm – understood correctly – must be a humanistic paradigm based on the idea of "homo eligens" (a choosing man) and a moderate indeterminism. This point of view has many advantages: among others, it explains poor effects of the research in the etiology of crime and the difficulties in the struggle against crime. Criminology must be developed. That is relatively easy within descriptive criminology but significantly more difficult in explanatory criminology, where the more interesting information must be obtained from the criminal himself.

101-145

Authors: Mateusz Rodak

This article is an attempt of a summary of the debate, pending in Poland in the interwar period, on the issues related to the etiology and methods of preventing and / or controlling crime. Analyzing these two highly interrelated and interdependent problems, the author decided to take into consideration the clear-cut division in criminology prevailing in the interwar period and to reflect it in the structure of the article. Thus, the text is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the causes of crime, the second the criminal policy. However, the text is not an analysis of all the causes of crime. The author focuses on discussion of the interwar views on the social causes of crime held by persons or institutions related, on various different levels, to criminology. Accordingly, the section on criminal policy includes response to crimes being, at least in theory, a result of social causes. The autor of the article faced the problem to attempt to collect and present ideas on social causes and method of preventing and / or combating crime published in the interwar period. The study covers articles and books, in which the above-mentioned problems have been discussed both by scientists (criminologists, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and sociologists) and laymen (journalists, publicists, community workers, and politicians). In this text, the attempts to analyze the opinions expressed by the latter of the aforementioned groups is a significantly new thing. The views of people not directly related to the academic community at that time were rarely taken into the consideration while discussing criminological theoretical considerations of the interwar period. The point of departure of this text is assumption of the thesis that in the interwar debate on the broad issue of crime, the views which favoured social factors in generating crime were significantly dominant. It should be recalled that on the other side of the dispute there remained a theory of special importance of so-called endogenous factors. It was argued that the specific psycho - physical construction of a man makes him predisposed to become a criminal. This was an aftermath of a C. Lombroso’s theory, already modified in the interwar period. It should be noted that his theory in Poland was not received unquestioningly. However, the dispute between supporters of exogenous and endogenous factors took place in interwar Poland. A strong trend was a school trying to combine the two trends, taking into account the reasons of both parties as typically they did not exclude. This should be regarded as a unique achievement of the Polish criminology of the interwar period.

159-172

Authors: Olga Sitarz

The object of the analysis are the institution known in the criminal law as active repentance and other similar normative institutions, which are sometimes referred to by scientists as active repentance in its broad sense or as quasi-active repentance. I was interested in the behavior of the perpetrator after commitment of an offence as a factor affecting the extent of perpetrator’s criminal liability in the context of criminal and penal policy (legally permissible modification of criminal responsibility in individual cases). Even a brief review of the institutions of active repentance in the Polish criminal law (regulated in the general and specific chapters of the Penal Code) allows to state that there is no uniformity, consistency, and rationality in shaping of this substantial instrument of criminal and penal policy. Sometimes one may have an impression that the issue of active repentance was regulated quite accidentally, not as a part of the comprehensive, rational criminal policy pursued by the entire criminal justice system. Since the key question is whether the established and accepted objectives and functions of punishment and / or criminal law can be achieved without a punishment, therefore the first part of the article is devoted to theories and functions of the penalty in conjunction with the reasons and functions attributed to active repentance. The different functions of an active repentance – to increase the efficiency – require some specific element in the design of this institution to be taken into consideration. These variables may be: if the benefits gained by the repentant are facultative or mandatory, the extent of the benefits, additional requirements imposed on the offender related to his conduct, an indication of a shorter or longer time limit to meet the statutory requirements and / or conditions related to repentant’s motivation, directory of the deeds in which the perpetrator can use the benefits arising from his active repentance, and indirectly also the place and method of regulation. Whether these variables should include consent of the victim, with all its consequences, probably also needs to be taken into consideration. Referring to the presented features of active repentance, by operating with the indicated variables, one can attempt to construct a variety of models of active repentance appropriate for performance of specific functions. Assuming its preventive function, active repentance should be provided for the widest range of crimes possible. Preferably, active repentance should be described clearly and precisely in the general part of the Criminal Code. Benefits provided for the accused person should be as wide as possible and always obligatory. Effective preventive function enforces the need to spread this instrument, especially the profits associated with it.

209-221

Authors: Leszek Wilk

There is a common opinion that fiscal offence has no criminal character but is merely an administrative offence and consists only of petty deeds of little social noxiousness. This opinion is not accurate with regard to basic types of tax crimes which very often are varieties of common frauds or forgery that may seriously endanger financial transactions of a country or local government. They are characterised by the fact that the tax procedures and legal structures are faked or falsely initiated and employed to commit or de facto to camouflage offences of criminal character. One example could be tax fraud involving simulation of a series of transactions which have no real economic of commercial significance and serve to fake alleged tax obligations and to initiate the procedure of VAT and ultimately to obtain from the Treasury substantial amounts of unjust VAT refunds under false pretences. These are in fact ordinary criminal offenses committed with the use of tax refund procedures. Possibility of moving VAT free goods between countries of the European Union with the lack of adequate monitoring mechanisms in the Member States resulted in a dangerous increase in the number of organized frauds, which are simply regarded as a mechanism “embedded” in the EU VAT system. They are referred to as tax carousels or carousel frauds. Tax law, its mechanisms, and its procedures are sometimes used not only for this type of criminal extortion of property from the tax authorities but also as for a so-called money laundering and legalization of illegal incomes. Generally, tax offences shows more and more close links with strictly criminal offences, it is becoming more and more organised, professionalism of the perpetrators is increasing, and even a growth in brutalization of such crimes can observed. This should change a traditional approach to tax crime.

265-298

Authors: Piotr Stępniak

The article presents the results of research on the assessments of the programmed influence formulated by the prisoners. There were a lot of hopes pinned on this system introduced to the penitentiary policy by the Executive Penal Code of 6 June 1997. The system proposed modern educational interactions based on cooperation of the prisoners with the prison staff and assumed active participation of prisoners in its implementation. The key issue of the system is to negotiate the individual schemes and voluntary commitment to respect them by prisoners participating in such negotiations. Enforcing convicts’ activity, particularly the juvenile ones, was supposed to create a chance of individual choice of more efective meaures to influence them and to shape a sense of responsibility – and at the same time to prevernt from return to crime. Since this system came into force on 1 September 1998, now almost 11 years ago, an vital task was to investigate not only the various aspects of its implementation, but also an opinion about this system, formulated by members of the prison community, especially by prisoners. So far there were few empirical studies of this system in everyday prison reality. More extensive research in this field includes studies of A. Nawój and E. Silecka, M. Bramska, A. Kurek and D. Schmidt, and A. Szymanowska. With this as the point of departure, the author of the article carried out a survey in the year 2008 to gather the views of the prisoners about the system and its performance. The study included 540 prisoners selected by the criterion of purpose, and participation in the system imprisoned in facilities subordinate to the District Inspectorate of the Prison Service in Poznan. A survey was conducted from October 2008 to March 2009 in 3 closed units in order to obtain homogeneity of the survey sample. Test groups were randomized. It should be emphasized that the randomisation was made in a way which maintained the proportions between the juveniles and adults indicated above. Surveys with opinions of convicted were supplemented with structured interviews with a group of 30 prisoners selected by the randomization from the group surveyed. Studies have focused on issues such as motives of joining of the criminals to the system programmed interaction, participation of criminals in constructing individual programs of interactions and its determinants, the contents of individual programs, interactions, objectives, tasks, rights and obligations of prisoners, cooperation between the prisoners and their teachers in drafting of schemes. The results of the survey lead to the conclusion that the evaluation of the test by the respondents is generally positive in all the subgroups under study. Nevertheless, the prisoners clearly indicate that the use of this program had a formal, official character.

345-387

Authors: Krystian Bedyński

The prison system being organised since August 1944, became a part of the Ministry of Public Security. Such a solution, dictated by political considerations, copied the Soviet model, which treated the prison guard as a part of the armed organ of the government. Identification of prison staff with the Ministry of Safety was expressed in the wording of official vows made by the guards which started: "I, a public safety officer". This unity was stressed for decades in prison staff politics, in employee certificates, and in the assessment of the implementation of tasks assigned to prison guards. The primary task put in words on the 4th of October 1944 by Boleslaw Bierut was "to render harmless those who oppose the program of PKWN [the communist Committee of National Liberation]." This directive and the subsequent resolutions and decisions of the party (PPR, PZPR) and ministries (MBP, MSW) requiring repressive treatment of political prisoners was noted in the subordinate units as a political and official license for brutality and sadism towards such prisoners. Since the beginning of the postwar system of prison system detention centres, prison and labor camps were places of repression and extermination of the citizens who were considered political opponents. Apart from the repressive measures the prison system also performed an oppressive function towards society, which was to serve the pacification pro-independence feelings. Since November 1944, the prisoners started to be classified into one of the following groups: common criminals, Volksdeutsches, persons cooperating with Germans, anti-state. Since February 1945, the term "anti-state prisoner" started to define an accused (convicted) associated with the AK and NSZ [anti-communist military organizations], war criminals and collaborators. Putting the former soldiers of the AK, NSZ, and BCH with the rest of prisoners stigmatised them, and was a part of an affliction and persecution. In practice, their status was lower (worse) than the status of other prisoners, particularly Germans. In the fifties, the rules for classification of the convicted changed twice, each time worsening the situation of political prisoners. Based on the principle of so-called unity of jurisdiction and performance required tougher sentences along with accordingly tougher prison treatment. Types of prisons corresponded to prisoners’ classification. In April 1945, eight major prisons were singled out, where the political prisoners were consigned after judgment. In January 1946, two large prison units were given the status of the central prisons, namely the facilities in Rawicz and Wronki. They retained the status of objects for political prisoners until 1956. The essential precondition for the problem and repressive and exterminative nature of these prisons was appointment of the positions of a chief, his deputy, and heads of special (operational) and political-educational departments.