Archiwum Kryminologii (Archives of Criminology)

Number XXVI, 2002

7-16
Refleksje na temat niektórych problemów współczesnej kryminologii

Authors: Anna Kossowska

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There seems to a pressing need for a discussion about contemporary criminology and the challenges confronting it in today’s world to be undertaken among the practitioners of this discipline. The article signposts some of the many topics around which this discussion should center. One might, for instance, ask whether the findings of studies carried out to date are still applicable in analysis of contemporary crime which has become different in kind and degree and occurs in an immensely more complicated social reality. Many authors have indicated concern about the standard and range of theoretical discussion in contemporary criminology. Questions are also being asked about the utility of the accomplishments of theoretical criminology for description of contemporary crime and its underlying causes in the societies of late modernity. A feature of contemporary societies is the ubiquity of threats from crime defined as both an objective fact and a subjective element ofthe social consciousness. It is not only that victimization by crime is becoming increasingly widespread (which is an objective fact); a crime-driven sense of menace and fear is also spreading. This is exerting a self-evident influence on the organization of private and communal life and the functioning of formal social control. The ubiquity of fears of crime helps to boost support among the public for the doctrine of law and order in its various forms. In societies afflicted by high crime rates there has been a spread of attitudes of frustration, hostility and anger towards criminality, offenders and so-called “liberal” policies on crime. Acceptance of an expansion of the extent of formal social control (meaning in effect tougher sentencing of criminals) is on the rise. Tendencies toward politicization of the menace of crime can be very clearly observed. The adoption of tougher policies on crimo is leading in many countries to an extraordinary growth of the prison population, but has done nothing to reduce crime or abate fears. Some people talk of a “crisis of penology”. Given this situation (politicization of the problem), it might be asked whether criminology is still a socially useful discipline. Another question (and source of concern) has to do with criminologists’ ability to analyze crime in circumstances of social change. Misgivings on this matter are aroused by a tendency to concentrate on description of contemporary crime (e.g. in countries in the process of transition) than on investigation of its causes. There are, therefore, grounds for wondering about the utility of traditional criminological theories and the possibilities of accounting, at the theoretical level, of the factors underlying contemporary changes in crime. At a time of manipulation of the public’s fears of crime can criminologists make any effective contribution to formulation of policies in this field? What should the research priorities in an age of so-called “new threats” from crime? Is tere still a place for investigation of the issue of norms and values (especially in the context of the differences’ between criminals and non-criminals)? How is the state of criminology affected by internationalization of crime, advances in communications and globalization? It seems obvious that it is time embark on research projects of a cross-cultural nature – but is cooperation between criminologists hailing from decidedly differing cultural backgrounds feasible? Lastly, does criminology’s accomplishments to date entitle us to draw conclusions about contemporary crime?

17-51
Przestępca zawodowy

Authors: Zbigniew Lasocik

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The article seeks to sum up all that has been said on the subject of professional criminality in the past half-century. It was never any part of the author’s aim to offer an analysis of contemporary professional crime. He viewed his task in much more modest terms. First of all he presents the origins of professional crime in a historical perspective and adduces the traditional definitions of the phenomenon dating to the first decade of the 20th century. Next he addresses the issue of empirical determination of the scale of professional crime and presents more recent approaches to description of this kind of criminality and attempts to define the concept of professional criminal. In an account with a primarily sociological focus the emphasis is on the origins of professional criminality seen as one of many mechanisms regulating the behavior of individuals. Historical sources indicate that professional criminality made its appearance during the late Middle Ages when feudal social structures were overtaken by a process of disintegration. The rise of this type of crime was made possibile by the materialization of conducive social and economic conditions such as changes in social structure and mass production. Professional crime is a product of modern societies, which employ money and produce surpluses of goods. In primitive societies there are not enough goods in the possession of the average citizen for the professional criminal to make a livelihood from larceny and for this occupation to be viable as one of the forms of organized social activity. Scholars did not discern this problem until the end of the 19th century. The first one to introduce the idea of the professional criminal to the language of criminology, law and sociology was F. Liszt. This was at a time when lawyers, anthropologists and sociologists were engaged in debates and arguments on the subject of repeated criminality and ways of tackling crime of this type. It was then that there came the first definition of professional criminality. There was agreement among many analysts of that period that the most important thing was to recognize that wrongdoers polish their expertise in the art of committing crime and make such activities a permanent source of income. Simultaneously, in the United States there came the beginnings of in-depth studies of social phenomena, including crime, pioneered by the Chicago School. One result of the new investigative approach was the first studies of professional crime, notably Edwin Sutherland’s well-known work The Professional Thief. The traditional definition of the concept of professional criminal derives precisely from this period, that is the first half of the 19th century. Though investigations in Europe and the United States followed a variety of directions the findings with regard to the principal characteristics of professional criminals were substantially similar. The basic characteristic was seen to be the fact that professional criminals earn their living from committing crimes, which means that the time normally devoted to employment is in their case devoted to planning and carrying out criminal activities. A second salient characteristic was possession of the requisite knowledge, skills and experience in the field of criminal activity. Another influence on this kind of career choice is a sense of identification with the criminal world and a hostile attitude to the representatives of law and order although the professional criminal also knows how to deal with them in a crisis situation (e.g. arest). Despite the existence of a host of writings on the subject of professional criminality and agreement among many authors about its principal characteristics, voices questioning the existence of such a category as the professional criminal continue to make themselves heard. The aforementioned works also includes ones whose authors attempted empirical verification of the existence of such a category of criminals and determination of the scale of professional criminality as a social phenomenon. Here investigation encountered obstacles as it was found that the more or less generally accepted definition of professional criminal did not easily lend itself to the process of operationalization. None the less, as a result of research conducted in various countries, in various periods and by diverse methods scholars have succeeded in establishing that professional criminality does exist and is a widespread phenomenon rather than the elite occupation that it might appear to be based on the proposed definitions. Students of the subject suggest that the number of persons meeting the definition (even in its simplest version) should be estimated in thousands rather than double digits. Professional criminality is from a legal point of view a phenomenon of no interest. The commission of a crime by a perpetrator who can be characterized as a professional criminal does not in most cases weigh for anything in determining the degree of criminal responsibility. However, professional crime is of interest as a social phenomenon, which explains why the literature on the subject is dominated by works with a typically sociological approach. Scholarly inquiry revolved around a number of problems which in terms of the intrinsic nature of the phenomenon discussed here are of the essence. Of these the most important are the relationship between professional criminals and their social environment and with the wider community, their attitude to law enforcement agencies, social status, rationalization of their behavior, and the machinery of recruitment to this group. Though the relations between the criminal and the “occupational” group take a diversity of forms, it is those of a normative character which are of overriding significance. It is thanks to the criminal group that he acquires professional criminal status and the group which lays down the system of rulet for the criminal’s social and professional conduct and which forms the natural infrastructure for criminal activity. On the other hand, every criminal is also a member of society to which he is connected by a multiplicity of ties. If he is to function in the community at all normally, even if it is only on the fringes of social life, he has somehow to rationalize his behavior which is, at bottom, directed against society. The most frequent way in which he does this is by questioning the honesty of all other participants in the social situation or by moral disparagement of his victim. There is no agreement among scholars on the question of nature of the professional criminal’s attitude to “normal” society. Some maintain that it is negative, others that it is positive. The former stress the fact that a negative attitude is a simple consequence of employing rationalization mechanisms which place the perpetrator of crimes in a conflict or at best hostility relationship with society. According to the opposite school of thought professional criminals try to maintain the best possible relations with society and are sympathetically disposed towards it since its success and well-being are for them a guarantee of rich pickings. However, there is a special relationship between professional criminals and the representatives of law enforcement. A natural consequence of their chosen career is that they are in a state of permanent conflict with the guardians of law and order. However, conflict does not necessarily mean enmity. Police officers regard the elite of the criminal world with a peculiar kind of respect, especially thieves who do not resort to violence. Though professional criminals treat police officers or prison guards as their adversaries they acknowledge their superiority at the moment of apprehension. They then go out of their way to gain an officer’s favor and will not shrink from attempting bribery and occasionally even passing on information. The normative character of the professional criminal’s relations with the criminal group means that the machinery of recruitment of new members becomes the crux of the matter. On this point, too, researchers’ opinions are divided. There are those who contend that the phenomenon of recruitment exists and that it is the crucial element in the creation of occupational identity and internalization of group norms. The critics of this view readily cite empirical data which indicate that criminals themselves deny the existence of a phenomenon of recruitment and its performance of any kind of regulatory function. The so-called traditional method of defining professional crime, given currency by European legal theorists and American sociologists in the first half of the 19th century, has come under criticism in recent decades. Researcher representing various theoretical schools have gathered empirical evidence that calls in question the existence of a category of professional criminals who make their living solely from crime, specialize in one kind of crime and are closely connected with the criminal world, the latter being their point of reference and source of norms and rules of conduct. The reality seems to be more complicated. Among criminals there are some who are beyond question professionals and specialists in some area of activity but have never belonged to any sort of criminal community. There are also felons who have strong links to criminal groups but engage in a diversity of criminal activity and do not aspire to any form of specialization. It is becoming increasingly frequent to treat the criminal community not as a reference group but as a natural infrastructure for criminal activity. A question that arises in this context concerns the connections between professional crime and organized crime which for years was treated by criminology as a separate and distinct phenomenon. In the crime patterns of recent decades there have also appeared other developments (car theft, cybercrime) with respect to which the traditional method of defining professional crime has proved useless. The questions raised and the doubts voiced have confronted criminology with the necessity of redefining professional criminality. However, if the phenomenon is viewed in a somewhat broader perspective it has to be noted that one of the most important challenges for contemporary criminology might prove to be reorientation of theoretical reflection on the subject of definition and classification of criminal behavior in general and by the same token reorientation of our way of thinking about construction of typology of crime.

53-100
Więźniowie młodociani poddani systemowi programowanego oddziaływania na podstawie badań psychologiczno-kryminologicznych

Authors: Aleksandra Szymanowska

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The article is devoted to presentation of a psychological/criminological investigation of 163 young offenders who in 2000 after serving at least 12 months of a custodial sentence were preparing for release from a penal institution. This study formed part of a wide-ranging survey carried out under a research project entitled “The Effectiveness of the Reformed Criminal Law”, financed by the Committee for Scientific Research. The convicted delinquents were young males with, compared to the totality of Polish youth, a very low level of education. Only 27% of the respondents had completed some form of post-elementary education and most of these had not progressed any further than basic vocational training. Also, a clear majority did not possess any acquired trade and prior to detention had never held a job. Barely 22.7% were in full-time employment. Very disturbing is the evidence provided by the survey of alcohol abuse by a majority of the respondents. They drank frequently, and in large quantities, not only beer, which is widely advertised, but also spirits. Low levels of education, lack of a trade and tendencies to alcohol abuse add up to a decidedly negative prognosis factor. At a time of high unemployment persons without an education or trade and exhibiting tendencies to alcohol abuse have virtually negligible prospects of social readjustment after release from a penal institution. Another equally negative factor is the fact that a substantial percentage of young offenders began their criminal careers already in childhood or early adolescence: only 24.6% had never previously been brought before a juvenile court charged with a punishable act and during the period of the survey were serving their first prison terms. The remainder either had prior convictions, had been prosecuted in a juvenile court for a punishable act or been tried on criminal charges both as minors and after their 17th birthday. A decided majority of the respondents (89.6%) were serving prison sentences for crimes against property, including 36.2% convicted of robbery with violence. One of the aims of the investigation was to establish the family backgrounds of the respondents, the current state of their relations with their parents and the chances of their families being a source of assistance and support after their release from prison. Compared with the parents of all children attending post-elementary education, the young offenders’ parents have much lower standards of education; another finding was that in the families of convicted delinquents there is a much higher incidence than in the families of youth in general of various pathological phenomena. It was found, for instance, that 79% of the respondents were raised in homes in which fathers, mothers or siblings were alkohol abusers (including 338% in which members of the immediate family were chronic alcoholics). In many families (63.8%) there was a history of violetce in various forms and a quite substantial proportion (45.3%) of the respondents had persons with criminal records in their immediate family. Between the parents of the respondents, probably as a result of alcohol abuse or financial difficulties caused by lack of permanent employment, there were frequent conflicts. Fathers were perceived by over half the respondents as persons taking very little or no interest in their welfare. Mothers, on the other hand, were thought by most of the respondents to have shown them love, accepted them fully, provided care and support and tried to shield them from all kinds of dangers. Despite this perception of mothers as affectionate and devoted the delinquents were far less inclined than law-abiding youth to trust them completely. Aside from progress at school, nothing was expected of the respondents by their parents and consequently the only things for which they were punished were bad grades, truancy and disobedience. Among the punishments most frequently imposed by parents were corporal punishment and detention. As in the case of punishments rewards were usually received by the respondents for good grades at school and assistance with household chores. The most frequent forms of rewards were money or presents. During their imprisonment almost all the respondents maintained frequent contacts with parents. Family members, especially mothers, visited them regularly and provided assistance in the form of care packages and money transfers. After release from prison comprehensive assistance was expected from fathers by 42.9% of the respondents and from mothers by 73%. Since attitudes to religion differentiate to a large extent people's attitudes and behavior the survey sought to establish the view taken of religion by the respondents. A decided majority of them were persons who described themselves as believers but non-practicing. There was also a significant percentage of non-believers (14.8%). By contrast the least numerous group comprised systematically practicing believers. All the convicted delinquents were, in accordance with the provisions of the penal administration code, serving their sentences in a system of individualized treatment. Prior to implementation of such programs, information is collected about the offender (from court and police files, interviews, observation, medical histories, psychological tests, etc.) and used by a psychologist or pedagogue to prepare a penitentiary diagnosis which explains the causes of the delinquent’s flouting of socio-moral and legal norms, describes his metod of social functioning and indicates the basic problems which may be future obstacles to social readjustment. To determine whether the subjects included any identifiable groups of persons with similar characteristics in terms of the causation of criminal behavior cluster analysis was used. Based on this analysis two distinct groups of delinquents were identified. The first comprised delinquents with strongly developed consumption needs, disposed to pleasure and avoidance of effort but also very susceptible to negative influences in their environment. The second group consisted of delinquents whose criminality was connected primarily with a dysfunctional family situation, alcohol abuse, and low mental capacity, especially with regard to planning and foreseeing the consequences of their actions. In the picture of the social functioning of the respondents obtained by the cluster analysis technique three distinct groups were identified. The first group, comprising about 40% of the subjects, consisted of delinquents good at establishing interpersonal contacts but with a scornful attitude to all moral and legal norms and no respect for any kind of authority. The second group was made up of delinquents of a submissive temperament, often functioning in a victim role, but who were also characterized as acceptance-seekers and quiet and conscientious students or employees. The third group consisted of delinquents betraying symptoms of emotional disturbance, displaying little self-awareness and incapable of critical assessment of their own behavior, inclined to manipulate other people and disposed to satisfaction of immediate needs. Rehabilitation treatment of convicted delinquents must take account of their basic problems. Cluster analysis of respondents with differing problems made it possible to identify two distinct groups of delinquents. The first consisted of individuals whose basic problems were, in the first place, lack of education and skills, an uncritical disposition, inability to control themselves in difficult situations and immature personalities. The second group was made up of delinquents whose chief problems were tendencies to alcohol abuse, susceptibility to negative influences, lack of aspirations and aims in life, and lack of family support. To determine how delinquents cope in difficult situations a study was conducted using the A-R Action Strategy test (developed by K. Ostrowska) and the Life Orientation Questionnaile (A. Antonovsky). The findings yielded by the A-R questionnaire indicate that in difficult situations, especially when prized values are threatened, a decided majority of the subjects emploi a strategy of resignation. A preference for this strategy was typical of delinquents disposed to avoidance of effort and situations requiring risk, courage and perseverance, and with a pessimistic view of the world. The second psychological test employed in the study was the Life Orientation Questionnaire which is used to identify the level of a person’s sense of coherence defined as the characteristic responsible for resistance to stress. Based on analysis of the study’s findings it can be said that the lower the respondents’ sense of coherence, the more frequently they were inclined to adopt a resignation strategy. There are, therefore, grounds for the hypothesis that employment of a resignation strategy, which could greatly impede the rehabilitation process, may derive from a low sense of coherence, that is, treatment of the stimuli flowing from the outside world as chaotic and incomprehensible, coupled to the absence of any sense of being capable of coping with tasks requiring commitment and effort. Based on the information about the convicted delinquents contained in the penitentiary diagnoses, the psychologists and pedagogues drew up, with the assistance of the subjects themselves individualized programs of treatment. The kinds of tasks most frequently specified in these programs called for the delinquents to maintain contacts with their families (94.5%), engage in cultural, educational and sports activities (91.4%), undertake work (76.1%) and study (63.8%), and develop desirable habits. Individualized programs ought to take account of, on the one hand, the characters of the delinquents themselves and their needs and problems and, on the other, the possibilities for implementing the recommended tasks in the conditions of a penal institution. Since at present, given the overcrowding of prisons, pedagogues are incapable of devoting too much time to each inmate and there is also a shortage among prison-service staff of the requisite number of therapists and trainers to conduct psycho-correctional activities and workshops in various interpersonal skills, some of the recommendations are of a general and formal character. Besides, not all of the recommendations laid down in the individual programs can be implemented by the inmates. This applies in particular to work-related recommendations since in a situation in which broad sections of Polish society are afflicted by unemployment the prison service is incapable of providing work opportunities for all inmates. The study also sought to determine delinquents’ attitudes to prison-service personnel and the way in which they function while serving their sentences as reflected in the punishments and rewards received. The inmates’ attitude to prison staff was described in most cases as positive, especially with respect to pedagogues, psychologists and therapists, less often with respect to warders. It was also found that a positive attitude to prison staff was decidedly more frequent among delinquents serving their first sentence than among ones with previous convictions. The most frequent transgression for which the subjects had been punished was infractions of prison rules and illegal contacts. The most frequent punishments were formal reprimands and temporary exclusion from participation in cultural, education and sports activities. As for rewards, these were conferred for performance of community service, diligence and orderliness, and exemplary job performance. The most frequent rewards were commendations and additional visits. Since, as mentioned earlier, all the respondents were preparing for release from prison the survey sought to establish iheir plans for the immediate future. A decided majority (82.8%) intended to seek employment as soon they were released; in some case the plans, included starting a family, further education, severance of ties with their previous criminal environment, etc. Sadly, no less than 17.2% of the subjects had no concrete plans. For each of the delinquents the psychologists examining them drew up a psychological/criminological prognosis. In drawing up this prognosis they factored in declarations by respondents of a wish to change their way of life, their degree of demoralization, self-improvement activities while in prison, previous convictions and contacts with the criminal justice system as minors, and what support they could expect from their familie. A decidedly favorable prognosis was made for only 9.2% of the subjects and a decidedly unfavorable one for 12.9%. Most frequently, the psychologists were unable to formulate a prognosis, realizing that the social readjustment of released prisoners depends on very many diverse factors. All of the respondents were released in 2000. When follow-up checks on reconviction were carried out two years later it was found that 23% of the subjects had committed violations of the law in the catamnesia period.

101-131
O efektywności prawa karnego, ciemnej liczbie, wiktymizacji i rozmiarach narkomanii

Authors: Leon Tyszkiewicz, Sebastian Kosmowski

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The article presents the results of survey research carried out in the Katowice and Chorzów regions (SE Poland). In early 2000 we obtained 414 questionnaires completed by under- and post-graduate students at the University of Silesia’s Law and Administration Department and students of local high schools. The investigation was victimology-oriented, the respondents being asked not only whether they had been victims of crime of various kinds but also whether the perpetrator had been punished. Our premise was that based on measures adopted by Polish criminal procedure the victim of a crime was entitled to know of the offender’s punishment, assuming that he had in fact been convicted. Within our sample the predominant group was young people, females marginally outnumbered males, almost all respondents reported average or above-average circumstances, and almost all were also urban–dwellers, the vast majority living in towns with populations of over 100,000. The first question that interested us was the effectiveness of the law, chich is most fully reflected in measurements of absolute effectiveness, that is, the percentage of crimes punished to the total number of crimes actually committed. This umounted to 3.33%. If we deduct the relatively large number of non-indictable offenses, i.e. not subject to prosecution by the state (e.g. libel and slander) the figure rises to 4.02%. In addition to the absolute effectiveness measure we also calculated a relative effectiveness index. It was the ratio of punished offenses to the total number of offenses reported to law-enforcement authorities by the respondents. In our survey the relative effectiveness index amounted overall to 20.0% and after the elimination of non-indictable offenses to 19.7%. To estimate effectiveness we deducted offenses committed in 1999 on the assumption that the majority of these were too recent for prosecution and conviction to have taken place. Obviously, a crucial influence on measurement of the effectiveness of the law is exerted by the number of offenses reported to law-enforcement authorities. Our questionnaire was designed to allow respondents to adduce the number of instances of victimization in the preceding year and in general without mentioning their location in time. Since the survey was carried out in earlv 2000 the preceding year was 1990. The level of notification of crimes for the whole period in question came in our survey to 15.3% of the total incidence of crime. For 1999 this ratio recorded a count of 13.1% in other words was fractionally lower. After deducting non-indictable offenses these indexes rise to 19.9% and 19.0 % respectively. The most frequently reported crimes were burglaries (58.7%). Next on the list came simple larceny (18.6%) and fraud (18.1%, 29.5% in 1999); no cases of bribery were reported. A relatively rarely reported crime was robbery with violence (12.2%, 13.7% in 1999). The so-called "dark figure" can be stated in a variety o ways. One is by an absolute number, either broader or narrower. This depends on inclusion in the dark figure of all offenses actually committed or only those which are not reported to the law-enforcement authorities or are subject to private prosecution. Another way of determining the dark figure is by an index- or ratio-based measure. Here, too, there are two possibilities. In the first the number of offenses actually committed per the number punished is calculated. The second estimates the number of offenses actually committed per the number reported. The findings of our survey were as follows. The dark figure for the total number of crimes actually committed and the whole of the period in question amounted in absolute terms to 1,492 and for unreported offenses to 1,263. For 1999 corresponding counts came to 562 and 488 respectively. In index-measured terms the number of offenses actually committed per the number reported amounted for the whole period in question to 6.5 and for 1999 to 7.6, in other words to fractionally more. The number of offenses actually committed per the number punished (after deducting offenses committed in 1999) since it is hardy likely that any of these would already have been punished in early 2000 amounted to 30. Considerable attention was given to determining the structure of offenses committed, reported and punished and to the structure of offenses committed to the injury of different categories of victims (men, women, high school students, undergraduates, doctoral students). Differences were found here. The most significant was that the most frequent victims of offenses against the person are males and persons in the younger age group; the same pattern holds for robberies with violence of which females are only exceptionally the victims (only three cases in the whole the of the material gathered by the survey). By contrast, females and persons in the older age group are the most frequent victims of simple larceny. An in-depth victimologicar analysis yielded the following findings. The coefficient of victimization, that is, the total number of offenses per member of the sample, amounted for the totality of our respondents over the whole period in question to 3.60, though it was much higher for the male and younger age group (5.5 for the former and 7.86 for the fourth-year high school students). In the females group as a whole the coefficient came to 2.40 and was highest in the doctoral students sub-group (3.27). The victimization index is the percentage of the number of crime victims in the whole of the sample. If we subtract the victimization index from 100 we will obtain a percentage measure of the number of persons who have not be victims either of any crime or of a crime of particular kind. For the whole of the sample and the whole of the period in question this index amounted to 76.1%, i.e. the number of non-victimized persons did not exceed 23.9%; for 1999 the counts were 47.1% and 52.9% respectively. The victimization index in the males group amounted to 85.1% for the whole period in question and to 57.8% for 1999; in the females group the analogous counts came to 70,4% and 40.3% respectively. Victimization intensity is a measure which is characterized by the number of criminal acts committed per victim. In our survey it amounted to 4.74 for the whole sample and the whole period covered by the survey and to 2.88 for 1999. The analogous scores for the males and females group came to 6.46 and 3.68 and for the females to 3.41 and 2.16. An important supplement to victimological investigation is determining an index of victimization variation. It completes the picture provided by victimization intensity. For obvious reasons this measure is calculated only for the whole sample or its subgroup. It illustrates how many kinds of offenses have been committed against the average victim. Victimization variation is calculated by dividing the sum of the number of individuals wronged by particular categories of offenses by the total number of victims among the persons included in the sample. There is a certain relationship between victimization intensity and variation. If intensity equals one, variation also equals one. Aside from this instance variation either equals intensity or is slightly lower. Variation can never exceed the number of the kinds of offenses specified in an investigation. Within these limits the closer the variation index is to the value of variation, the higher the variation of criminality given that intensity is relatively high. If inteisity approaches unity variation, despite the proportionately high level of the index, diminishes. In our survey intensity for the whole group and for the whole period in question amounted to 4.74 and for 1999 to 2.88. In other words, the average number of offenses per victim came overall to almost five, and in 1999 this average came to close on three.The variation measures attained a level of, respectively, 2.38 and 1.58 which means that, overall, victims were wronged on average by two kinds of offenses and in 1999 by between one and tow. The highest intensity occurred in the males subgroup of the high school students group (8.24) which also had the highest variation index (3.46). As for intensity second place was occupied by males in the doctoral students group (8.04), thougt its variation score/count was markedly lower than in the high school students group (2.80). Our survey also indicated the scale of drug abuse. The respondents were asked to state the number of contacts they had had with persons using drugs and with dealers or producers of drugs. Within the whole group studied contacts with consumers of drugs were reported by 49.0% of the respondents and contacts with drug dealers or producers by 25.1%. These contacts were much more frequent among the high school students (67.4% and 39.3% respectively) than among tne undergraduates and doctoral students (27.4% and 8.6%). The survey presented here covered a relatively small group of persons and one drawn from only a single region. Further investigations of this type are essential.

133-159
Kara ograniczenia wolności w świetle polityki kryminalnej w latach 1970-1998

Authors: Mirosława Melezini, Grażyna B. Szczygieł

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The subject of the article is an analysis of the non-custodial sentencje known in Poland as curtailment of liberty (and thus excluding fines) as an important instrument of penal policy in the 1970-1998, the main focus being on two strands or this policy–legislative policy and penal policy–to the exclusion of the latter’s administrative aspects. In the light of the guiding principles of the 1969 Criminal Code non-custodial sentences were intended to become an important penal policy measure for treatment of perpetrators of minor offenses and at the same time to provide a substitute for short terms of imprisonment, which had been found relatively ineffective as a means of achieving rehabilitation of convicted offenders. However, the normative extent of the code’s provision for non-custodial penalties proved to be relatively narrow. Within the range of alternatives to custodial punishment curtailment of liberty was an option available only under 17.5% of the defined offenses. Under Article 54 §1 sentencing to curtailment of liberty was admissible for 24% of all offenses and under Article 57 §1.3 for 27.9% of the total. The potential possibilities of non-custodial treatment of offenders were circumscribed by the provisions of Articles 54 §2, 52, 59 and 60. A significant influence on the frequency of sentencing to curtailment of liberty was the actual incidence of criminal acts punishable by alternative form of treatment. Based on an analysis of Ministry of Justice and judicial statistics it appears that such acts were not among the most frequently committed offenses, amounting to about 10% of all convictions. The systematic growth of the proportion of sentences to curtailment of liberty, from 6.2% in 1970 to l8% in 1980, should, therefore, be regarded as achievement of the maximum level of possible sentences of this kind. If we consider the share of curtailment of liberty in the structure of sentences for offenses punishable by alternative forms of treatment we will find that there was a judicial bias towards curtailment of liberty. The frequency of such treatment of offenders fluctuated between 32.83% and 56.54%, while the range for fines came to 21.26%‒5I,99 % and for imprisonment to 3,4%‒21.26%. It can, therefore, be said that in the first decade following the 1969 Criminal Code’s entry into force curtailment of liberty fulfilled the purpose envisaged by the lawmakers, that is as an alternative to short terms of imprisonment. Undoubtedly, a factor contributing to the increase in the proportion of non-custodial sentences in the structure of final and conclusive judgments was the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, in particular its guidelines for the administration of justice and judicial practice issued on 30 May 1979 (VII KZP 31/1977) concerning sentencing policy with respect to offenses for which the prescribed punishment is, interchangeably, imprisonmet, curtailment of liberty or a fine. Imprisonment, these stated, should be a penalty imposed only in the last resort when non-custodial forms of treatment are deemed incapable of performing the function of protection of the legal order. If a salient characteristic of the 1970s was stability of legislative policy, which precluded the possibility of shaping penal policy by means of legislation, the 1980s, or more precisely the period from 12 December 1981 to 1989, saw the emergence of a tendency in the opposite direction. For it brought the adoption of numerous basic amendments in criminal legislation, the general thrust of which was towards severer difinition of criminal responsibility. This was reflected in a decrease in the proportion of non-custodial sentences in the structure of final and conclusive judgments (from 15.6% in 1981 to 8.2% in 1984) and a concurrent increase in the frequency with which courts sentenced offenders to imprisonment (from 25.3% in 1981 to 33.1% in 1984). During the years in which the rigorous provisions of the Special Criminal Responsibility Act were in force, that is in the period from 10 May 1985 to 30 June 1988, there was a systematic rise in the proportion of curtailment of liberty in the structure of sentences (from 10.1% in 1985 to 17.4% in 1987), which might have something to do with the introduction by the May legislation of provisions allowing for non-custodial treatment of offenders in summary proceedings. The 1988 amendments to the Criminal Code, aimed at relaxing definitions of criminal responsibility, included, albeit in only a limited degree, provisions relating to the applicability of curtailment of liberty. These changes reflected a desire to increase the significance of non-custodial treatment in penal policy. However, in judicial practice there ensued a decrease in sentencing to curtailment of liberty, from 10.5% in 1989 to 5.3% in 1990. The period of political, economic and social change in Poland which began in 1989 stimulated criminal law reform. The aim of numerous legislative change which followed was to reduce the punitive character of the Criminal Code. One reflection of this was greater provision for non-custodial treatment of offenders (introduced by the new Criminal Code enacted in 1995) through a broadening of the grounds for commuting sentences of imprisonment to curtailment of liberty or a fine under Article 54), reduction of the role of repeated criminality as an aggravating circumstance in punishment of offenders, and abolition of extended sentences for offenses classified as "hooligansm" or committed by repeat offenders. In 1991-1995 the share of curtailment of liberty in the structure of sentences held steady at a level of 3.5%‒3,9%, making it the lowest ever for the period in which the 1969 Criminal Code was in force. This was not a result of the greater repressiveness of the criminal justice system since we observed a drop in the frquency of sentences of imprisonment. The courts tended to favor the use of conditional suspension of custodial sentences (the share of which rose from 43.9% in 1989 to 55.1% in 1997) and fines (up from 4.9% in 1989 to 27.4% in 1997). The explanation should, rather, be sought in problems with execution of sentences to curtaiment of liberty, chief among them the job shrinkages caused by changes in the free-market economy. Analysis indicates that curtailment of liberty did not fulfill the expectations associated with this form of punishment. It did not become a significant instrument of penal policy nor did it contribute to reducing the scale of sentencing to terms of imprisonment. Even after a substantial widening of provision for punishment by curtailment of liberty its share of sentences ordered by the courts reached a level of only 5.2% (in 1977). The new Criminal Code has substantially expanded the possibilities of sentencing offenders to curtailment of liberty. This form of punishment is intended to be an important instrument of penal policy with respect to misdemeanors and minor offenses and to replace imprisonment and even fines if ordering the latter is thought to serve no purpose. At the same time the Criminal Code has introduced modifications in the legal shape of this punishment. By preserving, contrary to the intentions of the code’s original drafters, multivariate forms of punishment it gives curtailment of liberty some of the hallmarks of probation by introducing the possibility of imposing certain additional conditions and establishing supervision. The new elements in the design of curtailment of liberty have met with numerous criticisms of the doctrine (including by the authors of the article). How it will affect the functioning of the institution analyzed the immediate future will tell.

161-180
Kryminologiczne aspekty przestępczości granicznej

Authors: Katarzyna Laskowska

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In this study the author indicates the main problems that appeared in Poland as a result of the opening of borders after the transition to a new economic and political system launched in 1989. The list is headed by offenses committed by foreign nationals, smuggling activities, illegal crossing of frontiers, and population movements, especially from very low-income countries. Border crime is defined here as both illegal border crossing, customs and currency offenses, forgery of documents and crime againts institutions. Border crime can be examined in a large numer of aspects as offenses which ere a threat to fundamental public policy interests. The crux of the matter lies in the motives and aims of the perpetrator. When we refer to border crime we have in mind the kind of offenses that are associated with cross-border movement of persons and objects involved in an illegal activity The commission of offenses falling into this category is not confined solely to border regions. The area of operations of criminals of this kind may be the whole of a country. Border crime is crime of a special kind. Its effects and in particular its further consequences are not always visible. Nor in all such cases is there an injured party, though it should be noted that serious harm may be suffered by people smuggled across borders and that injury is caused to victims of smuggling-related car theft. It is worth drawing attention to the etiology of this kind of crime. Among the internal influences contributing to its growth should be included the closure or collapse of workplaces, state farms and industrial enterprises, especially along Poland’s eastern border, and the consequent rise in unemployment. In recent years there has been a notable decline in the public’s standard of living, which has prompted some of them to seek alternative or additional sources of income.With increasing frequency people set their sights on swift multiplication of wealth and see in smuggling, for instance, a relatively simple and low-risk way of making money. It is worth noting a judicial tendency towards unduly lenient treatment of perperators of border crime and to hand down light sentences (most glaringly, for organizacion of illegal border crossing). Another development has been a steep rise in the incidence of pathological phenomena among officials, such as forgery or falsification of documents, bribery or entry into the structures of criminal groups. Much more dangerous are the external factors driving border crime, such as steadily worsening economic decline in parts o fthe Middle East, Asia and the former Soviet Union and rising unemployment and inflation in the countries concerned. Other causes are wars, national, ethnic and religious conflicts and the inadequacy of the technical protection of frontiers. Not without significance is the continuing demand in the East for cars of Western make and the possibility of legalizing their acquisition if they have been stolen. There has also been an intensification of corrupt practices among public officials with an influence on the state of national security and inviolability of frontiers (especially among the border guard forces in Belarus and Ukraine). Also conducive to the growth of crime is the further organization and specialization of criminal groups pursuing activities on both sides of the frontier. The author also offers a detailed picture of selected types of border crime. Her study centers on the legal and criminological aspects of the crime of illegal entry. She indicates the methods of committing this crime employed by its perpetrators at both border crossings and along smuggling routes. She depicts the mechanisms involved in the smuggling of persons with particular emphasis on the role played in such trafficking by organized criminal groups. Another criminal activity worth attention is smuggling, chiefly of liquor, cigarettes, cars, drugs, animals, guns, etc. This crime is a threat to the economic interests of the state which incurs significant losses of revenue in this respect. The author brings out the complex, underground modus operandi of the criminals involved and stresses the prominence in this illicit activity of organized criminal groups. The data illustrating border crime points to the continued persistence of threats from illegal immigration into Poland, including in many cases in organized forms, and its transformation from a transit to a destination country. Because of the unabating demand in the former Soviet republics for Western cars rhe organizers of smuggling rings will probably develop more sophisticated methods of falsifying the documents of cars (mostly luxury models) stolen in West-European countries. As at present there will be continued smuggling, both by individuals and in organized forms (of considerable value per consignment), of liquor into Poland and of cigarettes bound for Poland and Germany. Intensification of attempts to corrupt the personnel (including senior officers) of watchtowers and border crossings. The most important role in prevention and suppression of border crime is played by Border Guard personnel. More and more often they are equipped with modern equipment for X-raying baggage and carry out passport checks by means of readers connected to a computer database. Border Guard personel also engage in operations outside the border zone and conduct searches of dwellings and premises belonging to the organizers of illegal cross-border traffic. Not infrequently they face an increased element of risk. Criminals often possess firearms, gas and other dangerous implements. Hence the importance of specialist training, physical fitness, unarmed combat skills and the ability to handle weapons. An important erement in fighting border crime is cooperation with other public institutions. Preventive action and operational, surveillance and investigative measures aimed at improving the state of security and public order and detection and expulsion of foreign nationals who have entered Poland illegally are carried out in the border zone in collaboration with the police. Because of the nature or its responsibilities and the international connections of criminal groups the Border Guard maintains day-to-day liaison with its counterparts in other countries. Among the most important areas of cooperation between the border authorities of European Union members, Central and East European countries, the United States and Canada are interchange of information about tasks, structures, jurisdictions, powers and problems relating to cross-border traffic and border crime and interaction in operational and investigative activities. There is a particularly successful record of cooperarion with the German authorities (specifically the BGS). It is worth stressing that amendmends to the Border Guard Act adopted in 2001 provide for its equipment with additional powers for combating corruption, including operational oversight, „sting” operations, the offering or acceptance of bribes, and imposes on Border Guard personnel and employees the requirement to file declarations of assets. The powers in question could be a significant boost to the prevention and suppression of border crime.

181-212
Sekta religijna w świadomości młodzieży

Authors: Ewa M. Guzik-Makaruk

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The past fifteen years or so have been a time of significant changes in Polish religious life. The most notable feature has been a growth in the significance of the native religion which for the overwhelming vast majority of Poles is Catholicism. According to official statistics members of the Catholic Church in Poland constitute 95% of the population, other Christian faiths account for just under 3% and adherents of other religions, sects, religious and pseudo-religious or world view-based movements, including atheism, for only about 2%. However, another phenomenon has been taking place in the shadow of the process of change: the appearance and spread of new religious and para-religious movements. In Poland these movements appeared at a somewhat later date than in the West where their first wave of popularity coincided with the rise of the youth counter-culture movement at the turn of the sixties and seventies. New religious movements began to appear in Poland in the seventies and eighties and have become a permanent feature of the religious landscape though, statistically, they are still a marginal phenomenon compared with Catholicism. The proliferation of sects or cults of every kind and description is one of the more remarkable and individual-threatening phenomena of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Each year about 12,000 young Poles run away from home or disappear. Many of them discover “the sole truth” in one of the 300 new religious movements to be found in Poland. But that assertion does not justify drawing the erroneous conclusion that all these young people swell the ranks of religious sects though undoubtedly a certain, unknown, number of them end up in such organizations. The author has conducted a survey among students of primary and secondary schools, in the sity of Białystok and the law department of the local university. The aim of the investigation, carried out by the questionnaire method, was to elicit information about young people's awareness of the religious sects phenomenon and test the accuracy of the project’s theoretical hypotheses. The survey’s findings are presented in this publication separately for each age group of respondents: students of the eighth school grade of primary school and the last year of secondary school and uno undergraduates. Also included was a comparative analysis of the findings according to the age of the subjects, which was the basic variabre considered when preparing the report. The publication ends with a tabular section which serves the purpose of detailed presentation of the respondents’ answers to question regarding the sources of their knowledge of religious sects, the range of persons thought by the respondents to form the recruitment pool for converts to religious sects, and social distance. This section also contains the questionnaire used in the survey. The author undertook her research endeavor in the belief that beyond any doubt the population group most at risk from the activities of religious sects is youth. Thus there were good grounds for investigation or this social group in order to determine its level of awareness of religious sects and emotional attitude to them. As well as diagnosis of the phenomenon such an operation facilitates attempts to devise an information policy targeted young people. The investigation, which took the form of interviews, used a questionnaire designed for this purpose. The survey was carried out in the first quarter of 1999 among students of primary and secondary schools in Białystok and the law department of the local university. The sample analyzed in the study comprised 100 students of the eighth grade of primiry school, l00 high school seniors and 100 undergrauates. The breakdown in the eighth-graders subgroup was 48% female and 52% male. The respective proportions for the high school seniors were 30% and 70% and for the college students 45% and 55%. The 300-person youth sample so selected is a fair representation and allows for certain inferences to be made to the wider population. The respondents were informed of the subject and aim of the investigation, the method of completing the questionnaire and its anonymity. The empirical material gathered was characterized by a relatively small amount of incomplete data. Such instances were of a sporadic and random nature. The investigation aimed at testing basic hypotheses. Based on analysis of the literature and the findings of earlier empirical studies five specific working hypotheses were adopted: Young people’s basic source of information about religious sects is the mass media. Young people are not tolerant about admitting members of religious sects to their immediate social circle, while the degree of tolerance does not depend on age. Young people are aware that thy constitute the group most vulnerable to the activities of religious sects. Awareness of the dangers posed by sects increases with the age of the respondent. Awareness of the dangers posed by sects increases in step with advancement to the next step of the education ladder. The level of awareness of youth as regards the religious sects phenomenon and the dangers arising there from was strictly correlated with the age of the subjects and consequently also by their standard of education. The make-up of the different components of young people’s attitudes to sects varied according to the age bracket of the respondents. As regards familiarity with the religious sects phenomenon it was found to be universal and irrespective of whether the respondent was an eighth-grader, high school senior or college student. However, certain differences appeared in the kinds of sources from which the young derive their knowledge of sects. Analysis of the findings corroborated the hypothesis that youth is aware of the fact that it is the group most vulnerable to the activities of sects. Though none of the sample gave a full definition of sect it is satisfying to note that every one of the respondents identified correctly at least one of the basic characteristics, e.g. a distinctive ideology and practices, resort to subterfuge and lies in recruitment of new members, or the exceptional position of the guru. Interestingly, a decided majority in each of the groups surveyed perceived the negative phenomenon of sects. Generally speaking, college students as persons with ihe highest level of awareness of the dangers posed by sects assessed them unfavorably, though they were not as radical in their assessments as the eighth-graders or high school seniors. The most opposition in all the age groups studied was aroused by the idea of admitting a sect member into the family circle, the least by the possibility of having a sect adherent for a colleague. Analysis of replies to questions relating to social distance leads to the conclusion that the young people studied were not indifferent to the henomenon of religious sects. Sect members were not approved of in high public office. They were not well thought of in the role of schoolteachers or adoptive parents. Almost all of the college students and high school seniors in the survey expressed a belief that some religious sects were breeding grounds of crime. A decided majority of the eighth-graders and high school seniors thought that the functioning of sects ought to be prohibited by law. As regards the respondents’ views on the question of whether registration of religious sects should be made easier or harder there were also certain variations according to respondents’ age. Among the college students and high school seniors a decided majority were in favor of impeding registration of religious sects in Poland. By contrast, in the case of the primary school eighth graders such a belief was expressed by 49% while 43% had no opinion on the subject. This is perhaps to be explained by the fact that the latter do not posses the knowledge required to form an opinion on this matter.

Number XXV, 2000

9-28
Teoretyczne podstawy mediacji między ofiarą a sprawcą przestępstwa

Authors: Beata Czarnecka-Dzialuk

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Mediation as a method of conflict resolution also applicable to conflict resulting from an offences is the alternative of legal solution of disputes, a technique shared by various models that promote the use in practice of consensus. This novel plocedure fot conflict resolution (which is however derived from the traditions of the oldest societies) - a consensual one, based on agreement between parties - has been developing most dynamically over the recent decades, and pervaded all branches of the law in most legal systems (H. Jung, T. Marshall). In the specific context of criminal justice, mediation does not necessarily aim at conflict resolution. For this reason, it is defined as a process, where parties to proceedings are offered the possibility to actively participate in resolving issues that result from the offence, and are assisted in so doing by an impartial third person or mediator. Mediation may take a variety of forms (direct or indirect); it may be conducted by professional or lay mediators, under auspices of the law enforcement agencies or by an independent social organization, and the parties to it may include not only the victim and the offender but also their relatives and other supporters as well as representatives of the criminal justice system. As has already been mentioned, the origins of mediation between the offender and his victim date back to the oldest past when all issues related to harm involved in acts that are today treated as offences were adjusted in the course of negotiations by those directly concerned assisted by their families and clans. The offences was seen as a conflict between the victim and the perpetrator, with due consideration to the social context. Once the function of reacting to crime was taken over by the state, the reactions initially resembled the modern rules of civil law. Later on, when crime was interpreted as violation of the order established by the ruler, penal sanctions aimed not only at compensating the victim but also at supporting the authority of the state. Although Nils Christie's picture of the state stealing the conflict is a convincing illustration of this situation, the fact should be borne in mind that the state's taking over of the function of punishing was an immense cultural achievement of its time, especially for those members of the conmunity who were too weak to vindicate their claims (B.-D. Meier). Solutions that provide for specific forms of consensus can also be found in modern legal systems. In the area of mediation between the victim and offender, the practice outpaced theory. It was inspired, among other things, by examples of "community justice'' of non-Western cultures; by the movement on behalf of victims, the progress of victimology, the diversion conception, and abolitionism; by the theory of social peace and conflict resolution and by the conception of reparatory justice. This latter conception deals with most problems posed by the other ones. It is, however, difficult to define, and its essence is difficult to explain, especially if we try to embrace threads important for all the trends on which it bases. Thus in the end, a simpler definition suggested by T. Marshall won general acceptance: "reparatory justice is an approach to crime, oriented on solving the problem, which engages perionally all parties involved in it as well as the community, in active relation to the public sector institutions. It is not a specific activity but a set of ruled that may set the direction of the bulk of actions of all institutions or groups related to crime. Reparatory justice is a process in which all parties involved in a specific offence meet to reach a joint solution of the issue of effects of crime and conclusions for the future". This definition was subsequently modified somewhat by other authors. In particular, it was accepted by an international body - the International Research Network on Reparatory Juvenile Justice in its Leuven Declaration of May 1997 concerning advisability of promoting the reparatory approach to juvenile delinquency. Reparatory justice is discussed as a specific trend, approach, philosophy or even idea; according to most authors, however, it has not yet developed into a consistent theory, although incessant efforts are made towards this aim. The term "reparatory justice'' is attributed to R. Barnett; H. Zehr's contribution is the first general model of that justice as an "alternative paradigm of justice" whose main principles are opposed to those of the traditional retributive justice. Also J. Braithwaite's idea of "reintegrating confusion'' was of importance for the development of the reparatory justice conception. It is associated e.g. with Hirschi's theory of control, Matza's neutralization theory, Luhmann's systemic theory, and also with the traditional penal law theories under which evil has to be compensated by punishment, but compensation involving suffering prohibits a better arrangement of social relartions. Instead, reparatory justice balances the harm involved in crime through action aimed at compensation and “doing good” (Ch. Pelikan, B.D. Meier). M. Wright stresses that this conception largely tallies with the common-sense ideas as to how society should react to crime, supported by appropriate actions, analysis, and studies. Mediation and other restorative reactions are sometimes shown as responses that function instead, parallel or within the traditional justice system. Much speaks, however, for integration of reparatory justice with the criminal justice system. The approach that isolates mediation altogether from criminal justice pays insufficient attention to the danger of inequality of the parties to mediation in the area of efficient execution of their conflicting interests. Thus public interest requires that the course and results of mediation proceedings be supervised. The manner in which reparatory justice may replace repressive one depends first and foremost on the seriousness of crime. It is not in all cases that a purely reparatory reaction should be recommended as sufficient. This is among the frequent arguments of critics of reparatory justice (although even its supporters accept the existence of limits to its application). Skeptics also stress that reparatory justice violates a number of generally accepted rules of procedure, especially that of equality before the law (which, however, could be disputed) and the offender’s procedural rights due to him in criminal proceedings (which is in fact a weakness of reparatory justice, but collisions might be solved by appropriate rules and standards of the reparatory process or e.g. by judicial review of negotiated solutions). The conception of reparatory justice is often explicated through opposition of the basic models of reaction to crime (although faulty in some respects, this method well illustrates the most fundamental features). Reparatory justice is sometimes called the "third path'', an alternative to the (neo-) retributive penal law and the rehabilitation model which proves ineffective, and a fully mature self-standing model (L. Walgrave, I. Aertsen). M. Wright stressed two spccial ideas that distinguish reparatory justice from the traditional criminal justice system. The first of them is that the process itself constitutes an essential element of the reaction, that it is constructive and may even have a therapeutic importance. The other idea is compensation interpreted in a much broader sense - from symbolic actions such as work to those reducing the risk of the offender relapsing into crime. The justification and legitimization of mediation in criminal cases bases not only on new theorietical conceptions. Such justification can also be found in the assumptions of the traditional justice system. This is what B.D. Meier did assuming as his point of departure the penal law system's public function, including in particular that of restoring public order that has been violated through crime, and also that of preventing repeated violations. The traditional systems have always provided for two or three different models of reaction to crime. Prevalent is punishment imposed on the person who has been found guilty. The second model involves imposition of special measures irrespective of the offender's liability (security and preventive measures). The third model, of crucial importance for legitimization of mediation in the criminal justice system, consists in renouncing formal proceedings, e.g. in view of slight social harmfulness of the act, the fact that no public interest is involved in the imposition of penalty, or reasons of general and special prevention. According to T. Marshall, justifications of reparatory justice (fulfilled i.a. through mediation) should be sought in the community nature of the offence and its effects. Explaining the theoretical foundations of mediation between the victim and the offender is a complex task because of the multitude of its sources as well as theories and conceptions quoted, and particularly because of the lack of agreement as to the essence of the usually quoted conception of reparatory justice and as to its treatment as "competitive'' with fespect to traditional justice or (for which interpretation I would like to declare) as that system's highly profitable logical supplementation, improvement and expansion. Also in Poland, the practice of actions involving mediation have outpaced the theory: for several years now, there has been quite a rapid growth in its application in practice. In both spheres, there are many problems and challenges worth taking up. At the same time, expanding the theory is of importance for the practice. Explanation of the ideas, aims and foundations of mediation and of its position with respect to traditional justice is paramount for the institution's reasonable development, evaluation and shaping towards its meeting the expectations.

29-79
Probacja – rozwiązania prawne w niektórych krajach europejskich

Authors: Dobrochna Wójcik

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The article discusses the legal solutions of probation as well as regulations pertaining to organization of probation services and to functions of probation officers in criminal proceedings of adults and juveniles in some European countries. Discussed has been probation in England, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. The introduction focuses on the definition of probation; also, the role of international organizations in promoting probation has been characterized together with the importance of recommendations as to the principles and practice, issued by such organizations, for introduction of probation into criminal justice. Considering the future shape of probation, one might ask to what extent we can use those experiences. We believe that some foreign solutions of probation might be added to the Polish legislation in the course of the Polish probation reform which has been going on for several years now. The following problems should in our opinion be reconsidered and possibly regulated in a manner other than the present one. The major and basic issue is the decision as to probation's position with respect to the criminal justice system. The problem is regulated differently in different countries; decisions as to the Polish solutions should be carefully considered. The Commission for Probation Reform, appointed several years ago, suggested that the probation system remain part of the criminal justice system but acquire the status of an autonomous department, an associate and partner of courts. Related to this is the postulate that the work of probation officers be evaluated as to the merits by a competent superior officer and not by the judge as it is today. Also solved should be the problem of a possible separate regulation of juvenile vs. adult probation (as it is the case in many European countries). In such countries, there is also the trend to remove proceedings in cases of offences from juvenile courts and to deal with them within administrative procedure. As regards the measures applied to juveniles, their execution is more and more often handed over to social services. The system for assisting and educating juveniles who break the legal norms or find it otherwise difficult to become integrated with society thus becomes ever more consistent; the competent services cooperate with one another ever more closely and coordination of their work is improved, which enhances the effectiveness of their efforts. What is important for the proper effects of educational work is cooperation of probation services with local government agencies and local communities. Although the road towards this kind of transformation of probation is difficult in Poland and various obstacles may be encountered, it is nevertheless a worth-while effort to use the experience of other countries and to introduce modern legal solutions that have been tested elsewhere.

81-121
Przestępczość narkotykowa w Polsce w latach 1985-1996 w świetle danych statystyki policyjnej i sądowej

Authors: Krzysztof Krajewski

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In many countries of Western Europe, and of Northern America in particular, drug crime is a most serious problem both in the quantitative and the qualitative terms. This means that oflences of this type engage a considerable portion of the forces and means put at the disposal of law enforcement and criminal justice in those countries. Against this background, the question arises about the recent situation in this respect in Poland. The problem is that for many years after World War II, drug addiction was a problem of minor importance, also from the viewpoint of the police and courts. It was only in the latter half of the seventies, that a considerable drug subculture emerged in Poland, which resulted from propagation of homemade Polish heroin. And yet there was in Poland no "real'' black drug market or the division into dealers and consumers, as the addicts usually manufactured Polish heroin for themselves. Bigger changes only took place in the nineties, when Poland became a significant manufacturer of amphetamine for Western markets and an important transit country, especially for heroin smugglers from the so-called Balkan route. What remains unclear, instead, is the impact of those phenomena on the internal drug market. The extent of opiates subculture does not seem to have grown considerably, and Polish heroin still plevails, the "real" one being too expensive. What did go up, and significantly at that, is consumption of other drugs, especially amphetamine and marihuana. Yet against the general "moral panic" related to amphetamine, few epidemiology surveys indicate the greatest popularity of marihuana and not amphetamine among the school youth. The analysis discussed in the present paper aims first and foremost at answering the question as to the extent to which the above changes in drug addiction and traffic have been reflected in the functioning of law enforcement and criminal justice in Poland. To this aim, analyzed in the first place have been data on detected drug offences from police statistics, as well as date on convictions for such offences from court statistics. Basically, the analysis concerns the years 1985-1996 when the 1985 Drug Control Act was in force. With respect to the police statistics, analyzed have also been data for 1991-1998, that is the period of operation of the new 1997 Act. The major findings of my analysis can be summarized as follows. First and foremost, it has to be stated that in quantitative terms, the role of drug crime in the daily practice of law enforcement and criminal justice agencies in Poland in 1985-1996 was in fact of minor importance. Thus both detected drug offences shown in police statistics and convictions for such offences shown in court statistics constituted less than 1% of all offences and convictions as a rule. Admittedly, at the end of the discussed period, an upward trend in drug crime could be noticed in the police statistics in particular, and thus in the overall structure of crime; yet its extent is still much smaller compared to most West-European countries. The question remains largely open to what extent the growth in detected drug crime, particularly noticeable starting from 1994, results from an actual growth in the number of offences, as it may well result also from the Polish police forces' growing efficiency in detecting offences of this type. In 1985-1996, there was in Poland a most specific structure of drug crime. Thus two offences prevailed in the structure of both detected offences shown in police statistics and convictions contained in court statistics: illegal cultivation of poppy and illegal manufacture or processing of narcotic drugs. In some years, the two offences together accounted for over 80% of the bulk of drug crime registered by the police, and for even a greater proportion - up to 90% - of all convictions for such offences. Instead, the share in the overall structure of drug crime in Poland of such "classical'' offences as smuggling, trafficking and dealing in drugs was at the minimum level until 1994. It was only after that year that the proportion started to grow: by 1998, the structure was reversed with 65% of all offences detected that year being cases of dealing in drugs. So far, however, this shift is hardly reflected in the structure of convictions for such offences, which remains largely unchanged compared to previous years. This may demonstrate the Polish police forces' much greater efficiency in detecting drug dealers combined with persisting faults in the area of gathering evidence that would make it possible to indict specific persons in such cases. Another problem that can still be hardly called serious in Poland is punitive policy of courts with respect to drug offenders. Quite the contrary: there was a lot to indicate even in the eighties that the policy towards such offenders was even more liberal compared to the treatment received by other offenders. This was demonstrated by the role of fine as a selfstanding penalty, imposed much more often on drug offenders, and also by the more frequent staying of sentences. Of course, this situation resulted chiefly fiom the above-mentioned specific structure of the Polish drug crime. Traditionally prevailing among those guilty of the offence of illegal poppy cultivation were farmers, who whether intentionally ignored or were not aware of the limitations imposed on poppy cultivation by the 1985 Act. Among the illegal manufacturers of drugs, in turn, a considerable proportion were addicts who manufactured the Polish home-made heroin for themselves. Again, one can hardly speak of drug business in such cases. Most of the offenders were not profit-seekers. This means that under the 1985 Drug Control Act, Polish courts most seldom had to do with the "real" and "serious" drug crime - the long-established everyday routine of courts in most of the developed West-European and North-American countries where that crime absorbs a considerable portion of forces, means and energy of the local law enforcement. What is more, transformations of the Polish drug scene - reported by the police and the media - have so far been but slightly reflected in the work of Polish courts and in their penal policy. Again, the question remains open to what extent this situation might change over the next few years.

123-140
Problemy związane ze statystycznym opisem przestępczości w oparciu o dane statystyk policyjnych

Authors: Janina Błachut

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Crime, like any other social phenomenon, requires a statistical description. That description has been changing together with changes of the criminological paradigms. Today, data from three different sources are use to measure crime: official statistics, self-report surveys, and victimization surveys. The data are difficult to compare (in respect of their type, extent, and manner in which they are acquired); however, they are complementary and permit a multi-dimensional description of the phenomenon. The oldest and still the basic source of figures on crime are the crime statistics. What has changed, however, is the approach to such data. Today, they are evaluated in three different perspectives: realistic, institutional, and radical. The present study signals the problems that arise when trying to provide a statistical description of crime of the 1990s basing on police statistics interpreted (to a varying extent) in all three perspectives. My point of departure is the assumption that just like the other statistics of crime, the police statistics is a social construct. It is a product of social, political and organizational processes. Explanation of the process of statistics-making help towards a qualitative evaluation of the data contained in the statistics. The data from police statistics may be treated as indices of both the functioning of the institutions for social control, and of detected crime that results from such control. Important in the social process of statistics-making is both the occurrence of specific events or behaviors and the social reaction to them. Possessing political power, the state creates the system of laws together with organizational structures that supervise the observance of those laws. The functioning of the formalized legal control may be analyzed from the viewpoint of decisions taken by the legislator in the process of law-making as well as those taken by institutions specially appointed to exercise such control. Fundamental in the process of making of police statistics is the role of decisions taken by the police in the course of prosecution. The police (as well as other prosecution agencies) is authorized by state authorities to detect, qualify, register and count events that are found to be offences and the perpetrators of those acts. It is authorized to gather, process and publish data. The legislative process, that is the legislator's decisions concerning law-making, may be appraised in various perspectives. Important in the context of interpretation of data from police statistics is their evaluation in the perspective of criminalization/de-criminalization and penalization/de-penalization acts, construction of substantive penal law and criminal procedure institution, as well as regulation of the structure and competencies of agencies dealing with public safety and order, the police included. Also monitored should be legislative "steps" in the area of misdemeanors law and penal law concerning offences against the Treasury. In the process of both formalized and informal social control, offences are "disclosed''; evcnts and behaviors idcntified with prohibited acts are distinguished from among the bulk of events and behaviors. To "disclose'' an offence, one needs knowledge as to what is and what is not a prohibited act; the opportunity to recognize that offence; and the awareness of recognizing it. In our system, the institutions appointed thus to "disclose'' offences include the Police, the prosecutor's office, the Office of State Protection, Military Police, Frontier Guards, fiscal inspection agencies, the Customs Inspection, State Sanitary Inspection, State Trade Inspection, as well as other agencies specified in individual laws. As can be supposed, most offences are disclosed by the victims, natural persons, and members of victimized institutions. Disclosure of an offence is not tantamount to its reporting. Self-report surveys confirm the existence of disclosed but unreported offences. As follows from such surveys, people in different countries show different tendencies to report facts of victimization to the police, and those tendencies depend on the type of offence involved. In Poland, it is the citizens' social duty to report offences; that duty becomes legal in exceptional situations and with respect to a specific group of offences only. Not all reported offences are registered. Registration follows strictly specified rules related to the system of information gathering and processing that is currently binding upon the prosecution agencies. Registration of offences proceeds through a prosecution agency's decision to institute preparatory proceedings. Most often, the proceedings are instituted on the citizens' initiative. Once instituted, preparatory proceedings aims at establishing whether a prohibited act has in fact been committed and whether that act constitutes an offence. The event with respect to which qualification of the act as an offence has been confirmed by completed preparatory proceedings is treated as an established offence in police statistics. Preparatory proceedings also aims at detecting the offender, that is at identifying the person who has in fact committed a given act. At the preparatory stage, this person is treated as the suspect. In most cases, identification of the suspect by the prosecution agencies bases on indication made by the person who reported the offence. The process of detection of offenders varies depending on the type of offence, indication or lack of indication of the suspect at the moment of reporting the offence, and the province in which the preparatory proceedings was conducted. The legislator authorized the Police not only to detect, qualify and register offences, to detect offenders, and to take a variety of decisions concerning acts and persons in preparatory proceedings (at the stage of its institution, course, and completion), but also to gather appropriate data about those acts and persons and then to count, process and publish such data. The term "police statistics'' usually means a collection, gathered and published by the Police, of figures pertaining to crime. Such figures make it possible to describe the quantitative aspect of the phenomenon, but may be quite misleading if used in a wrong manner. Data from police statistics may be used mechanically, so to say, simply quoted with no attempt at explanation. They may be manipulated, that is used in a biased way towards specific aims. As we know, figures can be used to prove any hypothesis whatever, provided that they are selected, put in order, confronted and counted. They can also be interpreted; this, however, is where difficulties start to arise. It appears that it is by no means a simple task to provide a statistical description of crime basing on police statistics. The picture of crime that emerges from that statistics is usually described in a language typical of interpretation of such data in the realistic perspective. We speak of the extent of crime, its dynamics, and trends as if we believed that the data gathered by the Police permitted characterization of "real crime". Despite this language of the realistic perspective, the actual analysis bases on all three perspectives, that is also on the institutional and the radical one. This means that using police stirtistics, we at the same time analyze the process of their making. Awareness of the process in which the data emerge determines the manner of describing and interpretation of the phenomenon of crime.

141-177
Porozumienia karnoprocesowe w polskim procesie karnym w opinii sędziów i prokuratorów

Authors: Andrzej R. Światłowski

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Over the recent dozen years, there have been attempts in the criminal procedure doctrine at considerably re-formulating the airns of proceedings. It has been noticed, among other things, that the criminal process should not only tulfil substantive law. It has other aims as well that are just as important, including first and foremost liquidation of the specific “conflict” resulting from perpetration of an offence. This led to formulation of “post-classical” theories of the criminal process, stressing the consensual forms of conflict resolution that have been known since the birth of societies. Criticized was the assumption that the process seen as an instrument for fulfilling substantive law is in all cases the best form of conflict resolution and the best manner of legitimizing decisions of the agencies that apply the law (N. Luhmann, L. Morawski, T. Weigend, S. Waltoś). Consensual phenomena naturally arouse interest; they have become the topic of discussions. The real reason of such discussions is, among other things, a growing awareness of the poor efficiency of criminal justice: the disproportion of the means that can be used to fight crime to the actual needs in this respect. Already early in the nineties, the findings of a survey carried out within the Adam Mickiewicz University (A.J. Szwarc, J. Sobczak) demonstrated that agreements are alien to the Polish practice. The practice's opinion on that phenomenon varied in the survey: parallel to criticism, serious arguments were voiced for a broader use of agreements. This demonstrated the need for continued scientific discussion of the issue. The initial stage of that discussion was recapitulated at a conference held in June 1992 in Poznań. The conference provided the opportunity for the first direct confrontation of doctrine’s views. Several years later, a survey into formal and informal agreements was carried out within the Criminal Procedure Department of Jagellonian University (A. Światłowski). That survey also confirmed the existence in ptactice of a great variety of agreements, and the practice’s views proved just as diversified. The survey inquired about: 1) the actual extent of agreements, or at least that declared by the circles involved; 2) the appraisal of agreements by some of the legal professions; 3) the possible postulates de lege ferenda voiced on the eve of introduction of new codification, especially with respect to the future formalization of some forms of adjustments made in the criminal process, and to suggested new regulations. The survey was divided into three parts: a pilot survey, interviews, and a mail questionnaire. Upon completion of the pilot survey, the stage of interviews started. Interviewed were judges of common courts and prosecutors public prosecutor’s offices, three from each unit selected for the sample. To secure a possibly even distribution of units, the country was conventionally divided into four areas. Within each area, one court of appeal, one provincial court, and two district courts were selected: one of them operating in a big city in an urbanized area, and the other one – in a smaller locality in a rural neighborhood. A similar procedure was applied to select l2 prosecutor’s offices (one provincial and two district ones in each area). Thus the planned sample to be included in the interview survey was to include 28 units, that is up to 84 persons. Foreseeable difficulties considered, such as refusals to be interviewed or a probable situation where as many as three judges deciding in criminal cases would not be present at the same time in one court, it was assumed that about 50 persons would be interviewed (the actual number was to prove bigger: 62). Besides, selected for the mail questionnaire were 4 courts of appeal as well as 48 each of provincial and district courts and prosecutor’s offices, that is the total of 100 units. Of the 300 mailed questionnaires, 141 (47%) were sent back. The questionnaire was anonymous. The findings have been discussed in the present paper. It has to be stressed that about a half of respondents considered informal and para-formal agreements possible. As regards the incidents of such phenomena, 63 respondents of the mail questionnaire never encountered the informal and para-formal agreements; instead, 75 (53.2%) had to do with them at least once. Characteristically, none of them chose the answer, “very often”. Among the interviewed persons, 29 (46.8%) had to do with agreements, while 33 (53.2%) never encountered that phenomenon. A great variety of answers were given to the question about the stage of proceedings at which agreements are made. Mentioned here were agreemets in preparatory proceedings (and even before the institution or that proceedings), in proceedings before the 1st instance cort, and also in the appellate proceedings. Almost all respondents who declared knowledge of the practice of agreements mentioned the sentence as the basic and standard subject of agreement. Of course, also adjustments in purely technical matters were mentioned here. What seems to have been the most typical phenomenon under the former code of criminal procedure was an agreement under which, most generally speaking, the defendant admitted his guilt and did not “obstruct” his conviction in return for a more lenient treatment. Mentioned most often (by 34, that is 44.7% of respondents) as the typical initiator of criminal procedure agreement was the counsel for the defense. As regards the categories of cases in which agreements were made, mentioned were socalled “family cases”, that is abuse and failure to pay maintenance, as well as petty thefts, sometimes combined with compelling a specific conduct or with destruction of property. The fact considered that the number of respondents declaring frequent contacts with agreements was not big, more attention has been devoted in the paper to the statements of those persons, and an attempt has been made at formulating conclusions as to the features of agreements made at the time of the survey. To end with, respondents were offered the opportunity to make suggestions as to formalization of agreements in the new codification that was about to be introduced at the time of the survey. The most frequent postulates no doubt concurred with the subsequently introduced new institutions, especially with the new institution provided for in Article 387 of the code of criminal procedure.

179-192
Nieprawomocne orzeczenia sądów w sprawach karnych w świetle starego i nowego kodeksu karnego

Authors: Beata Gruszczyńska, Marek Marczewski

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193-223
Orzeczone kary pozbawienia wolności a długość faktycznego pobytu w więzieniu (na przykładzie skazanych za przestępstwa z użyciem przemocy)

Authors: Beata Gruszczyńska, Roman Kulma, Marek Marczewski, Andrzej Siemaszko

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Number XXIII-XXIV, 1998

8-12
[Profesor dr hab. Jerzy Jasiński 1930-1998]

Authors: Redakcja "Archiwum Kryminologii"

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13-44
Przyczyny przestępczości. Nowe aspekty międzynarodowej dyskusji o teoriach kryminologicznych

Authors: Hans J. Schneider

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This survey intends to critically inform the reader about new and further developments of criminological theories on causality and about how successful these theories have proved in empirical and practical terms during the last three decades. From the point of view of mainstream criminology the criminalbiological, criminalpsychological, criminalsociological, socialpsychological, victimological, critical-radical, feminist, postmodernist and integrated theories are being considered. Preceding this is a discussion of the theory of national choise, according to which criminality is based on a costprofit-analysis and which, empirically speaking, has not exactly held good. Among the criminalbiological approaches the theory of constitutional predisposition is being discussed which assumes an interaction between genes and environment to produce criminality. Since the studies on family, twins and adoption, while attempting to prove this interaction, show both theoretical and methodological shortcomings, this theory is being rejected. Under the headline of "criminalbiological theories" a discussion of mental illness and crime can be found. A psychiatrisation of crime is not held advisable: Only between 0.2 % and 2 % of all schizophrenic persons are arrested for violent crimes per year, which amounts 1.1 % to 2.3 % of the total arrests for violent crime. Among the criminalpsychological theories the following three approaches are being discussed: the psychopathological theory, the theory of criminal personality according to Hans Jürgen Eysenck and the biosocial theory of inherited criminal tendencies according to Sarnoff A. Mednick. It is proposed to give up the term "psychopathy'' altogether since it contradicts modern findings of dark field research that personality traits not socially desirable are restricted to and concentrated in only a small section of the human race. The theories of Eysneck and Mednick, according to which criminal behaviour is tfre result of interaction between certain social environmental factors and inherited predispositions of the central nervous system, have empirically not been sufficiently proven. The survey's emphasis lies on criminalsociological, socialpsychological and victimological theories. In the context o criminalsociological approaches the theories of social disorganization and of anomie are being discussed. A society is socially disorganized when social bonds dissolve, when social control breaks down and when interpersonal disorientation spreads among its members. The theory of social disorganization has been further developed inasmuch as the social structuring of delinquency areas has been described as a dynamic process and as the spiral-like social downfall and dereliction of a neighbourhood ("community crime career"). In empirical studies making use of data from accounts showing how people have become perpetrator or victim ("British Crime Surveys"), this theory of social disorganization has been widely confirmed. The theory of anomie has undergone further development by the adaptation of two new approaches: the theory of institutional anomie according to Steven F. Messner and Richard Rosenfeld and the theory of general strain according to Robert Agnew. The theory of institutional anomie underlines the extreme importance western societies ascribe to monetary success while at the same time not stressing the component of achieving this success by legal means. One institution – economy – assumes priority over all non-economic institutions such as family, education or politics, which on their part are only insufficiently capable of restricting the criminogenic pressure phenomenon, i.e. the overestimation of monetary success. According to the theory of general strain the incapability of reaching positively marked aims results in overstraining (pressure). This pressure can be measured by ascertaining the gap between aspirations (ideal aims) and expectations on the one hand and actual achievements and successes on the other. The socialpsychological theories, which are theories of social processes can be subdivided into theories of cognitive-social learning, control, interaction and life-course. According to the theory of cognitive-social learning a person acquires his/her behaviour by way of reinforcement and modeling. In self-reinforcement processes people both reward and punish themselves. Finally, this theory regards human learning as an active, cognitively controlled psychical process of assimilating experience. Criminal behaviour is learned by reaffirming (rewarding) it more than socially conforming behaviour. Delinquents acquire it in criminal subcultures, in which criminal behaviour is justified by means of neutralisation techniques as being "not really'' criminal. The theory of cognitive-social learning of criminal behaviour (the theory of differential reinforcement and imitation) has held good empirically and practically and has been complemented by the theory of crime seduction according to Jack Katz stating that the euphoria of criminal success is relevant factor. The robber f.i. is not only rewarded by his material profit but also by experiencing domination during the criminal act. Among the theories of control the theory of social bonds according to Travis Hirschi is widely appreciated in practical terms. Empirically speaking, however, it has not quite achieved what it promised. It has been further developed by the theory of self-control, according to which delinquents are persons with a low level of self-control as a result from ineffective and inadequate socialization. Another new development is the theory of control balance according to Charles R. Tittle. The central statement of this theory is that the amount of control a person is subjected to, as compared to the control this person exercises, influences both the probability of committing delinquencies and the possibility to commit certain types of crime. The theory of interaction, which is a theory of social process, has been converted in the seventies and eighties to a radical socialstructural labeling approach. Control institutions (f.i police, law-courts) are assumed to produce delinquency and criminality by selectively sanctioning the lower class in the order to preserve the power of the ruling class. In the nineties, however, the interaction theory is distancing itself from this radical power conflict approach and reverting to its original focus: its connection to the cognitive-social learning theory. The interaction theory has been supplemented by the Australian criminologist John Braithwaite. He regards shame as an essential means of informal social control and distinguishes between reintegrative and disintegrative shaming. The life-course-theories are new developments stemming from the late eighties and early nineties. According to these theories, delinquency and criminality develop in interactive processes spanning the whole cycle of life. Developmental crirninology focusses on the questions why people become delinquent (onset, activation), why their delinquencies continue (maintenance), why delinquencies often increase both in frequency and in seriousness (acceleration, escalation, aggravation) and, lastly, why people stop being delinquent (deceleration, desistance, termination). It is concept of casuality is dynamic and interactive. Personal and social damages cause delinquency and criminality which in their turn again result in personal and social damages. Basically, three life-course-theories have recently been developed: the interaction theory by Terence P. Thornberry, the theory of social turning-points by Robert J. Sampson and John H. Laub and the theory of criminal tendencies by David P. Farrington. Victimological theories open a range of completely new criminal-aetiological perspectives. For victimogenesis (enquiring into the causes for becoming a victim) the model of lifestyle-exposure and opportunity deals with the probability of individuals being in certain places at certain times and under certiatin circumstances and thereby meeting certain categories of people. The routine-activity-theory according to Lawrence E. Cohen and Marcus Felson distinguishes between three elements: a motivated offender, a suitable target and the absence of capable protectors (guardians) of this object against a violation. The routine-activity-approach accordingly predicts the highest risk of delinquency when the victim's suitability is highest: best social visibility, easiest access, strongest attraction and when the level of object observation is low. The routine-activity-theory has been further developed into a structural-choise model of victimization. Within this reconsidered and verified model the nearness and protection of a potential victim represent components of choise. The critical-radical school in modern criminology intends to develop an alternative to mainstream criminology and in the long run to replace mainstream criminology. While having achieved their first aim, thus far they have failed in thier second. The critical-radical school of thought can be divided into three theories: According to marxist theory the basis of crime can be found in the contradictions of capitalism oppresing and exploiting the working class. Crime originates in the basic conflict between the bourgeoisie and the working class, which is a conflict of power and interests. The anarchistic theory aims at showing that that kind of justice by which our modern1egal system defines itself is in reality a facade for an intrinsic system of institutionalized injustice. Left-wing realism holds a „theory” consisting of four variables: victim, offender, state agencies and the public. Without disregarding the victims of so-called street-crimes, radical realism is based not-only on comprehending the victimization of the offender by the state, but also on the understanding of victimizition of the working class by the working class. Feminist theories in criminology focus on the four following issues: the problem of generalization: It is questionable whether the criminological theories developed so far are readily applicable to women and girls; the problem of gender relations: an explanation is required on why women and girls; commit fewer and less serious crimes and delinquencies than man and boys and how significant a factor masculinity is for the genesis of crime; the victimalization problem: Both the manifestations and the causes of male physical and sexual violence towards woman have to be describeds much more accurately; the problem of equal treatment of man and woman in the criminal justice system: It is questionable whether the principles of masculinity or feminity, should define the climate of the criminal justice system. Constutive criminology is a postmodernist school. It questions the attempt of institutions and individuals to claim priority of ''expert'' knowledge. Truth to them is a form of domination. Linked with constitutive criminology is the peacemaking criminology, which tries to soothe human sufferings and reduce criminality in this way. Solutions of the criminal justice system are rejected as violent. Individual violence cannot be overcome through state violence. Integrated theories attempt to take the best of every ''middle-range" theory and combine this into a more comprehensive new theory. Finally, as an example of an integrated theory, John Hagan's theory of power control is put forward which aims at explaining the lower frequency and seriousness of woman's criminality and girls' delinquency by looking at patriarchy and class structures.

45-74
Przestępczość nieujawniona. Porównanie polskich rezultatów ICVS '86 i '92

Authors: Andrzej Siemaszko

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Poland participated in all the three ICVS series conducted so far, and research was each time carried out by the Law Enforcement Institute. However, due to Poland’s underdeveloped telephone network, only the 1989 (Warsaw) survey used the method of telephone interview. The next two series, of l992 and 1996, examined relative big and carefully selected national samples of households (of assumed over 2 thousand respondents in 1992 and over 4 thousand in 1996), but the traditional face-to-face method was used. The field survey was carried out by renowned opinion survey centers supervised by the Institute. Particularly worth stressing is the fact that Poland was probably the only country involved in ICVS where surveys started exactly on time. It should also be added that we achieved more than satisfactory completion rates: the proportion of refusals was about 5% in 1992 and 14% in 1996, and thus much smaller compared to survey using the CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) method. This of course influenced the quality of our findings. In 1995, Polish people most often fell victim to consumer offenses (14.2%) and carbreaking (10.1%). Rather high were also the proportions of interntional car damage (9.6%) and theft of personal property (5.6%). In the remaining cases, victimization coefficients never went beyond 5%. Compared to 1991, victimization structure underwent no greater changes. Of the 13 types of offenses examined, only 5 showed increases or decreases by more than 1% in the proportion of victims; the biggest change was 2.6% which was in practice still within the bounds of measurement error. Generally it seems, therefore, that in l991 and l995 unreported crime became stabilized in Poland as opposed to reported crime which in most cases still shows rather a strong upwards trend. Thus while robbery rate was 1.7 in 1991, the 1995 rate was higher by a mere 0.1% and amounted to 1.8. It should be added, though, that also our findings confirm the thesis as to a growing brutality of robbery and a change in the perpetrators’ modus operandi. For example, the proportion of robberies committed by one person went down from 25.2 to 18.8%. Besides, a larger proportion of respondents said to robbers had been armed. Also the „effectiveness” of robbery went up: a greater proportion (43.6 compared to 37.7%) stated that the robbers had actually managed to steal something. On the other hand, though, which is against expectations, also the proportion of statements as to robbers being armed went down. To our great surprise it appeared, too, that among the 13 countries participating in the survey (where ICVS '96 was carried out on the national sample) Poland had the highest robbery rate. The rate of batterics (attempts) went down from 4.2 in 1991 to 3.7 in 1995, that is by 0.5%. Yet characterization of those acts would be incomplete if we failed to mention that, in that same period, the proportion of batteries by assailants armed with dangerous weapons or firearms went up from 6 to 20.6%, and the weapons or firearms were actually used in 35.2% of cases. The more serious nature of batteries is also manifested by a considerable growth in the number of cases in which the victims needed a doctor: 32.8% in 1995 compared to 22.4% in 1991. As opposed to robbery, though, the battery rate in Poland is among the relatively low. Reduced most among acts with the element of aggression in years under comparison was the number of sex ofenses: from 3.6% in 1991 to 1.5% in 1995, that is by 2,1% (the difference being significant). It should be mentioned, though, that while none of the victims of this kind of act actually called it rape in 1992, the proportion of such persons was as much as 7% in the most recent survey. There was at the same time a rather considerable drop (by over 7%) in the number of victims who called the act ,,indecent assault”. Thus also the structure of this kind of acts underwent a specific change. What can be treated as indirect indication of seriousness of sex offenses are also statements as to criminal nature of the act (,,Do you consider the act an offense?”). Also those statements („Yes” answers) confirm the drop in the number of more serious acts of this kind (from 6.1% in 1992 to 53.5% four years later). Also reduced (by over 10%) was the proportion of statements as to serious or very serious nature of the incident. The relatively small danger of sex offenses in Poland is confirmed by confrontation with international data: in three countries only, the proportion of victims of such acts is smaller than in Poland. The growth of car sales situates Poland among European leaders. It was therefore interesting to find out about the impact of the growing number of cars on offenses ,,against cars”. According to the criminal opportunity theory, a considerable growth in the numer of such offenses could be expected, caused by increased ,,supply”. It appeared, however, that the growing number of cars failed to bring about any significant growth in the number of offenses against cars. Proportions of victims of car theft and intentional car damage (among car owners) went up in the period under analysis by a mere 0.1% (from 1.4% to 1.5% and from 9.5% to 9.6% respectively); in the case of victims of carbreaking, the proportion went down by 0.4% (from 10.5% to 10.1%). From comparison with international data on offenses ,,against cars'' it follows that Poland is among countries with medium-level threat of car theft; instead, the threat of car-breaking and international damage to cars is above the average, Poland ranking second and fourth respectively. Greater changes were found in the cases of one-track vehicles: motor-cycles and bicycles. In both cases, the numer of victims went down: by 1.8% in the case of motorcycle thefts, and by 1.1% in the case of bicycle thefts; it is worth stressing that the drop was significant. In most countries under research, thefts of one-track vehicles, bicycles in particilar, are a much greater problem than in Poland. Among the analyzed acts against property, the greatest drop (by 2.5% which makes the difference significant) was found in the case of the number of victims of theft of personal property. A sub-category of this group was pocket-picking inquired about by a filtering question. Worth stressing here is a drop in proportion of pocket-picking among thefts of personal property: from 83.2% in 1991 to 71.3% four years later, that is by over 10%. However, Poland is stil among countries with the greatest threat of thefts of personal property, pocket-picking included (which is rather understandable the fact considered that most Polish people still carry cash instead of a credit card). There was also a slight downward trend in the proportion of victims of housebreaking, both attempted (by 0.5%) and committed (by 0.1%). The proportions of victims of housebreaking (attempted and committed) situate Poland among countries with a medium-level threat of that type of offense. Compared to the previous survey. There was a considerable growth (by 2.6% which makes the difference significant) in the number of victims of consumer frauds. Instead, the number of victims of corruption of State officials went down by 0.7%. As follows from comparisons with international data, Poland is among the countries with the highest threat of such acts. Particularly alarming is the fact of as high a level of corruption in both post-communist countries included in the sample: in Poland and Czech Republic alike, that level is several times higher compared to the remaining countries. Similar trends can generally be found in a comparison of numbers of offenses per l00 respondents; here, however, differences in dynamics of individual offenses can be noticed with greater clarity. Striking is also a growth in the rate of batteries (attempts): from 6.7 in 1991 to 7.4 in 1995. The general victimization risk index is now 23 in Poland; it was 27 in the previous survey which means a drop by 4 points. From a comparison of that index with its foreign counterparts it follows clearly that the general extent of crime is not too big in Poland. At any rate, Poland is below the average of 11 Western countries of which 3 only (Finland, Austria and North Ireland) have indices lower than the Polish one. Yet underlying this apparent stabilization of unreported crime in the discussed period is a rather considerable growth or drop in the numer of repeated victims. Thus the proportion of repeated victims (respondents who fell victim to a given type of offense on at least two occasions during the last 12 months) went up in the case of car thefts by 9.1; in the case of car-breaking – by as much as 15.1; in the case of international damage to car – by 4.7; in the case of theft of personal property – by 8.2; in the case of burglary - by 4.9; in the case of robbery - by 9.7; and in the case of battery (attempt) – by 8.1. The only proportions that showed a downward trend were those of victims of motorcycle theft (by l0.2); bicycle theft (by 1.1); and sex offences (by 13.2). This is therefore a significant growth in concentration of crime (a greater numbers of acts against those same persons). Interestingly, the direction of the trend is not always the same in the case of one-time and repeated victims. For example, the proportion of victims of car-breaking went down by 0.4 in the period analysis while that of repeated victims went up by over 15. Differences in the dark number between individual offenses are very big. As follows from the findings of the Polish part of ICVS ’96, they range from nearly 100% (in the case of consumer frauds),to under 10% (in the case of car thefts). Besides, against expectations, the dark number was by no means the highest in the case of sex offences (it was very high, though: 88%). Generally it can be stated that the lowest dark number is found in the case of willful taking of property of considerable value, that is car and motor-cycle thefts, burglaries and bicycle thefts (7.2%, 21%, 45.7% and, 55.2% respectively). Seldom reported, instead, are thefts of personal property: the dark number is here nearly 80%. Also robbery and battery have a high dark number of 62.5% and 68.8% respectively. The dark number is definitely the highest (nearly 100%) in the case of the above-mentioned consumer frauds and corruption. As regards the inclination to report an offense, differences between the findings of the 1992 and 1996 survevs were greater but by no means explicit. Generally, there was an increase in the numer of reported aggressive offenses: batteries (by 6.4%); robberies (by 6.1%); and sex offenses (3.6%). The opposite trend was found in the case of reported thefts. The greatest was the drop in reported motor-cycle thefts (by 10.1%) and carbreaking (by 8.6%; here, the difference was significant). The proportion of reported bicycle thefts went down by 2.2%; that of cars – by 0.2%; and that of thefts of personal property remained unchanged. There was, instead, a rather considerable growth in the proportion of reported damages to car (by 3.2%) and burglaries (by 6.1%). The dark number of offenses is still very high in Poland, much higher than in the West. There, the average proportion of reported offences in the groups of six acts under analysis amounts to 50; in Poland, it is merely 34. This means that police data on crime in Poland are not too reliable as they say very little about its actual extent. Compared to the previous survey, the people's feeting of safety increased rather considerably which may also indirectly confirm the thesis that generally, there is no actual growth in crime in Poland. There was a growth by 11 points in the proportion of respondents who said they felt safe strolling in their neighborhood after dark; the proportion of those who said they avoided specific streets for reasons of safety dropped by one-third; and the proportion of persons who considered it highly probable that they would fall victim to burglary during the next 12 months was reduced by half. Despite the rather explicit growth in the Poles' feeling of safety, there was also a most considerable growth in their critical opinions on police work. Thus the proportion of respondents who consider police actions to control crime ineffective went up by a half. Respondents also spoke of fewer policemen patrolling the streets: the proportion of those who said that a police patrol turned up in their neighborhood at least once a day went down from 27.5 top 23.3. Mentioned more often among reasons for not reporting an offense was idleness of the police. Persons dissatisfied with the treatment they received from the police prevailed among those of the victims who had reported the last offense against them. The proportion of the satisfied was the highest among victims of reported battery: 40%. Among victims of reported robbery, instead, the proportion of those satisfied with the treatment they received from the police was somewhat under 30%. Worth mentioning in this context is also a considerable drop in effectiveness of police work as regards regaining of stolen cars. While the 1992 findings indicated a satisfactory effectiveness in this respect (in 77.4% of cases, the owners got their stolen car back) there were a mere 45.l% of such cases in the 1996 survey. Crowning this definitely unfavorable appraisal of police work is the nearly three times' growth in the number of persons who mentioned police officers among officials demanding a bribe (31.9% compared to previous 11.4%). It appears, therefore, that stable crime and growing feeling of safety is not accompanied - as one might expect – by more favorable appraisals of police work. This results probably from the fact that the people's expectations in this respect went even higher up since 1992.

75-113
Ofiary włamań mieszkaniowych (wyniki międzynarodowych badań porównawczych)

Authors: Zofia Ostrihanska, Dobrochna Wójcik, Rob J. Mawby, Sandra Walklate, Ilona Görgenyi

Abstract

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Burglary is a serious offense which particularly affects the victim. It often has more one victim, and its effects react on ihe entire family and broader community. For the victim, its important element is not only the loss of and possibly damage to property, but also violation of privacy and of the related feeling of safety. The survey discussed in the paper was conducted in 6 cities in the following countries: Germany - Monchengladbach; Poland - Warsaw and Lublin; Hungary - Miskolc; and United Kingdom - Plynouth and Salford. Discussed here will be mainly the findings obtained in Warsaw and Lublin, and data from the rest of the sample will be referred to on some issues only. The survey focused on the following issuess: 1/ circumstances of the offense and losses suffered by the victims; 2/ respondents’ attitudes to the police and appraisal of police work in their case; 3/ assistance received, self-organization, steps undertaken by the victims to prevent further burglaries; 4/ respondents’ feelings, their reactions to the offense and persistence of those reactions. The survey based on data from interviews with victims of burglary and on information obtained from the police (the questionnaire was developed by the designer and head of the project, Prof. R.I. Mawby and contained some questions from the British Crime Survey Questionnaire of 1984, 1988, and l992). Sampled in each city selected for the project were 400 reported cases of burglary; interviews were conducted in a half of those cases (200 burglaries) on two occassions, that is at least 6 to 8 weeks and 16 to 18 weeks after the date burglary was reported. As was shown by comparison of data on the socio-demographic situation of victims of burglary in different countries, variables such as age, structure of family, or material or housing situation significantly differentiate individual national samples (e.g. persons living alone were much fewer in Poland as compared to Hungary and the United Kingdom). The circumstances of burglary, losses suffered and anti-burglary protection measures shape differently in different countries. In the United Kingdom, the number of burglaries committed during the night while the victims were at home and asleep was twice as big as in Poland and Germany. On some points, however, no differences were found. About a half of respondents in all countries said that some of the objects stolen during the burglary were to them of sentimental value. Besides, property stolen most often throughout the sample was electronic equipment. Polish respondents were below the average as regards special protective measures. For example, a slight proportion only had alarm devices installed, and a mere one-third had taken out an insuranie policy. Due to high costs of insurance in Poland, the insurance sum was low as a rule and seldom corresponded with the actual value of equipment. As a result, Polish respondents could not get compensation from the insurance company; when compensation was paid, the loss actually suffered was hardly made up for. Interestingly, though, the taking out of insurance was related neither to respondent's level of education nor to his self-appraised material situation. Polish respondents' attitude to the police and opinion on police work tended to be more critical compared to the rest of the sample. Criticized were many aspects of police work in cases of burglary. Polish respondents stated more often that the police had arrived too late, ignored their suggestions as to possibly identity of the burglars, and failed to interrogate persons they indicated. A vast majority of Polish respondents believe that the police failed to inform them properly about the state of investigation. Fewer Polish victims of burglary are also satisfied with the way in which the police conducted the investigation in their case (about 20% compared to about 75% of British and Hungarian respondents). Policemen enjoy a lower prestige among Polish victims. Social perception of the police depends on their treatment of the victim but also on the national tradition, previous experiences with police forces being used by the authorities to perform political tasks, the image of the force created by the media etc. In view of the more critical opinion on the police found among Polish respondents, it is inieresting to find out whether such opinion has any objective grounds, that is whether the proportion of offenders detected in Polish cases was lower compared to the rest of the sample. The answer is no. In cases of burglary, detectability rate was low throughout the sample and Poland was by no means inferior in this respect. Polish victims' tendency to be the most critical of all towards police work may have a number of reasons. It may be related to actually greater shortages of the force (e.g. inferior equipment); to a greater pain involved in losses suffered by Polish victims; or to society’s critical attitude towards the police fixed under the past regime. On the grounds of our data, it would be difficult to select any of the above three explanations. Considering the reasons of Polish respondents' critical attitude towards the police, one can hardly ignore the fact that with a growth in both crime and thę social sense of threat in the country, also society's expectations and demands of the police have gone up. As we know, burglary causes not only material losses but also psychological effects which tend to persist for a long time in many victims. Inquired about in the survey were respondents' first reactions to burglary; the persistence of those reactions; reactions of their family members; and the aspect the victims considered the worst of all in their experience of burglary. As follows from the findings, the psychological effects of burglary suffered by the victims are similar in all countries in the sample. Most respondents felt depressed, and this frame of mind persisted in onefourth of the sample. The worst experience mentioned most often was material loss (which frequently amounted a loss of possessions that had taken a person's lifetime to amass); worsening of the living conditions; and in many cases the accompanying sense of harm and injustice. Another worst experience mentioned was invasion of privacy, a loss of trust in one's fellow men, and helplessness. Persons who consider themselves the most ,,affected” by burglary among Polish respondents are those calling themselves not too well-off, the not insured, and women rather than men. Compared to the rest of the sample, British respondents feel less affected by burglary; however, burglary was found to affect victims in a similar way irrespective of the country. Interestingly, the frequency of victims' psychological reactions followed the same pattern throughout the sample. Anger ranked first, followed by shock, anxiety, sleep disorders, and crying. Burglaries examined within the Polish sample affected a greater number of persons compared to those committed in the remaining countries: Polish households that were burgled were bigger. We also strove to find out whether respondents felt threatened with crime. Such sense of threat was more intense in Polish compared to Hungarian and British respondents. The system of assistance to victims was the best in terms of organization and functioning in United Kingdom followed by Germany, Hungary and Poland. The situation of Polish victims of burglary proved the most unfavorable as regards the possibility of getting both compensation for material losses and assistance from competent institutions. As opposed to the rest of the sample, Polish respondents were less often satisfied with the way in which the police handled their case and much more critical towards police work. The findings show that, in Poland in particular, the insurance system has to be reconsidered and differently regulated, and there is an urgent need for a systemic and coordinated program of comprehensive assistance to victims. The more critical opinion on police work found in Polish respondents also suggests that the treatment of victims by the police in Poland requires a thorough analysis.

115-165
Zezwolenia na czasowe opuszczenie zakładu karnego

Authors: Jerzy Szumski, Andrzej Siemaszko, Dobrochna Wójcik

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The article is composed of four basic parts. The first one is historical: it discusses the evolution of legal regulation of various forms of permits to temporarily leave prison (except interruption of execution of the penalty of imprisonment) and the practice of granting such permits in the period preceding the adoption of the new punishment execution code [PEC]. Concerned here were: permit granted by way of reward to leave prison for up to 5 days (Art. 55 § 3 PEC); so-called compassionate permit to stay away from prison for up to 5 days (Art. 59 PEC); so called reward permit for 24 hours (§ 62.1 of Instruction on the execution of the penalty of imprisonment before its amendment of 1995); and regulation permit also granted for 24 hours (abolished by the abvementioned amendment of the Instruction). Hence the discussion contained in the first part of the paper proceeds on two different planes. On the one hand, we discuss the legal shape of the permits undergoing legislative changes and at the same time submitted them to critical dogmatic analysis. On the other hand, we strive to demonstrate the functioning of those legal solutions in penitentiary practice basing on the findings of few earlier empirical surveys and on statistical materials gathered by the prison administration since 1985. Our main focus is the practice of the 1990s when systemic transformation and the related humanization of the process of imprisonment led to considerable growth in the number of granted permits to temporarily leave prison, and the relevant legal transformations the effected, that is amendment of PEC and the Instruction on the execution of the penalty of imprisonment. The issue of permits was then broadly covered by the media which - not always competently and objectively - criticized the authorities for too many such permits granted; this led to an animated discussion in the doctrine. Critics considered this policy of penitentiary authorities too liberal; they argued it led to a growth in crime caused by prisoners released on permit thus reducing citizens’ feeling of safety, and also made it possible for prisoners to escape or to stay away from prison longer than permitted. It has not been possible to appraise the discussed policy basing on statistical data only due first of all to the fact that the material we based on contained merely data on the number of permits granted and said nothing about the grantees and their characteristics. From statistical analysis it followed merely that from 1985 till 1993, the number of permits granted went up nine times only to become reduced by 40% during the next two years. Also on a regular decrease (from 6.3 to 2.4 percent) in that period were cases of so-called ,,failure to return” - a category which, for obscure reasons, in the statistics includes both the actual failures to return to the institution and cases of late-coming; the proportions were calculated from the total of permits granted. The number of offenses committed by prisoners while on permit was rather small and ranged from 200 to 600 a year. Part two of the article discusses international penitentiary standards relating to inmates’ contacts with the outer world and contained in the UN Standard Minimum Rules of Treatment of Prisoners of 1955 and European Prison Rules of 1987. Also discussed have been provisions regulating the permits to temporarily leave prison in selected European countries: Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Holland, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary. It could be stated basing on the analysis that the Polish regulations of the discussed sphere (even those valid before the adoption of the new punishment execution code) were consistent with international standards and by no means inferior to foreign provisions. The next part of the study discusses the findings of the authors' own research conducted on 15-31 August 1995 (that is, before the above-mentioned of PEC and rules of imprisonment) in 12 prisons and remand prisons. The tool was a questionnaire developed by the Law Enforcement Institute. Examined were the files of all prisoners who in the period from 1 January 1994 till 30 June 1995 applied for a permit to temporarily leave prison, or in whose case the application was field by prison administration, whether the permit was actually granted or refused. The sample was composed of 1,043 persons, and the number of applications was 7,336. The total of 6,524 permits were granted to 970 persons. It was found that a vast majority of permits applied for were actually granted which is to some extent accounted for by the fact that most applications were field by prison administration who subsequently supported them. Permits were granted to 93% of the sample which made as many as 6.7 permits per person on the average. What is more significant though, was that over one-fifth or the sample (22.6%) were granted 10 or more permits within a relatively short period of time which manifests the existence of a privileged group among prisoners. That same conclusion can also be drawn from the fact that, the mean length of time spent away from prison being 43 hours, 11% of the sample were on permit for 1 to 2 months, and 1.5% - for over 2 months. As regards return from permit, the proportion of prisoners who never returned was 8.4%, and over one-fourth of them were on the police wanted list during the survey. This phenomenon is the more dangerous as nearly a half of the sample (49.5% a failed to return in due time on at least one occasion. Instead, the number of offenses committed by the sample while on permit seems relatively small, the proportion of offenders being 4.3%. Offenses committed most often were burglary and robbery. Considering, however, the extremely small detectability rate in Poland, the proportion may well depart greatly from the reality. Even the above findings justify the statement as to a dubious value of appraisals of the correctness of permit granting policy basing on statistical material only. They also confirm the need for inclusion is those materials of data on the number not only of permits granted but also of grantees. Leaving aside a number of formal transgressions found in the course of research, the findings generally justify a conclusion that many permits were granted automatically, so to say. It was difficult as a rule to identify any objective criteria for granting or refusing permits; this means that the permit policy violated the principle of individualized treatment of prisoners. The article ends with general conclusions from the practice followed so far and with postulates de lege ferenda formulated on the grounds of amendments introduced by the new PEC of 6 June 1997. Not going into details of those amendments, it has to be stated that they trend towards extension of the legal possibilities of granting permits and of the length of leave thus granted. In the authors’ opinion, most of the amendments deserve to be praised which is of course not to say that none of them raise any reservations. It has to be stressed, though, that the appraisals are not too categorical as the new provisions (which enter into force on 1 September 1998) leave a considerable freedom of interpretation. The practice of their application should therefore be monitored closely to begin with; the findings will then help to verify pertinence of statutory regulations of the granting of permits to temporarily leave prison.

167-212
Pozawarszawska konspiracja więzienna na terenach okupowanych przez Niemców 1939-1945. (Udział polskiego personelu)

Authors: Krystian Bedyński

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In 1939-1945, the Nazi invaders organized over 1300 prisons and jails in the occupied territory of Poland. The institutions were instrumental to the policy of extermination the Polish nation which was among the aims of the invasion. Prisons and jails were places where Polish people were isolated, tortured and slaughtered. Inmates were transported to places of mass execution and to concentration camps; during evacuation in January l945, route columns were sent on ,,death marches”. The prisons where such genocidal practices were particularly intense are still present in Polish historical consciousness as places of torture and martyrdom. A symbol of this kind is the Pawiak prison in Warsaw where the Nazi confined over 100 thousand persons; 37 thousand were put before a firing squad, slaughtered, or tortured to death, and 60 thousand were sent to concentration camps. The Pawiak prison was also the site of the inmates' incessant struggle for freedom, survival, and preservation of dignity. In their struggle, the prisoners were assisted in a variety of ways by many Polish members of the staff compulsorily employed by the Nazi out of necessity especially during the first months of occupation. The assistance was both material and spiritual. The Staff would hand over to inmates articles such as food, drugs, cigarettes etc., and to confined priests - the Host. The Polish prison staff smuggled messages, contacted the prisoners' families, disclosed informers, warned against the Gestapo and helped to escape. Their acts resulted from patriotic, humanitarian and religious values. Attitudes of a considerable proportion of Polish prison staff who sabotaged the rulings of Nazi administration helped to accomplish intelligence operations started in prisons as early as the autumn of 1939 by underground independance organizations. In December 1939, Warsaw District Headquarters of Siuïba Zwycikstwu Polski [Service to Poland’s Victory, SZP] recruited three prison guard officers who were ordered to organize intelligence divisions in each of the Warsaw prisons. In the Pawiak prison, the structure continued to operate till July 1944; it based on the work of Polish staff duty prisoners, and a group of outside liaisons. Participation of the prison staff in intelligence operations undertaken by independence organizations broadened the notion of prison conspiracy, adding to it a variety of actions directly related to struggle against the invaders. Symbols similar to the Pawiak prison were also other institutions in Nazi-occupied Poland and in Polish territories included in the Reich. On the local scale, the prisons were symbols of particular torment of their inmates and of underground involvement of the Polish staff. The actual possibility of forming a prison conspiracy in Nazi-occupied territories depended on many factors. This was related to differences in the functioning of prisons systems in different regions. Individual administrative districts in territories included into the Reich differed in this respect from the occupied regions and from the eastern borderland of Poland, Nazi-occupied since 1941. The basic factor that determined the nature and intensity of underground activities was the size of Polish staff and their individual motivation resulting from the system of values professed. In territories included into the Reich, the prison system subordinated to Ministry of Justice controlled 142 formerly Polish prison institutions. Their arrangement in individul administrative districts was as follows: Warta Land - 49, Gdansk and West Prussia - 28, Silesia - 12, East Prussia - 6, and Białystok - 4. Among those taken over by Nazi invaders, the largest in respect of inmate population were the prisons in Sieradz (capacity of 1,146), Rawicz (1,075), Wronki (1,016), Koronowo (562), Poznań (464), and Łódź(420). Some of the prisons were taken over together with their inmates and Polish prison staff who were ordered to work on. This corresponded with the order that all inhabitants of invaded territories return to work on pain of severe sanctions, the death penalty included. The order applied also to prison staff who stayed on in their original place of residence or returned from evacuation or POW camps. Among those returning to work were guards who on the day of evacuation had been given secret orders to stay on and to take a job under occupation (Cracow, Wronki). In some localities, during the first weeks of occupation, there was a shortage of candidates for prison guards among both the Polish population and the local German community. The invaders thus had to hire German-speaking Poles with some knowledge of prisons, as e.g. court ushers. In November 1939, the process started of Polish staff being removed from prisons, in Warta Land in particular, and replaced with German guards brought in from the Reich, local Germans, and Poles who had signed the German nationality list. In 1943, the front situation becoming worse, some of the German prison staff were mobilized. Vacancies were filled with forcefully employed former Polish guards. Thus according to the changing staff conditions, also the possibilities of clandestine assistance to inmates changed. The possibility of intelligence operations in prisons in territories included into the Reich depended also on the functioning of independence organizations. The extent of repressions suffered by Polish people in those territories made it impossible to develop regular underground activities in prisons. In some prisons in the Gdansk and West Prussia district where Polish staff were left on the job (Grudziądz, Koronowo, Starogard Gdański), the guards immediately started helping prisoners: they contacted the families and smuggled packages, letters and messages. Most important was assistance in organizing escapes, saving persons from transports to concentration camps, putting them in the infirmary, or finding them a job in the prison. The Koronowo prison had special conditions for development of underground activity: throughout the period of occupation, its Staff included 44 Poles, 39 of them among the guards. Most guards became involved in various forms of assistance to prisoners; they cooperated with an inmate self-defense group and with an underground group of Koronowo women who rendered material assistance to inmates and helped their families coming on permitted visits. They also helped to find shelter for escaped prisoners. The only Polish woman guard in the Fordon women’s prison was only employed in 1943. From the very start, she rendered material and moral assistance to political prisoners, and organized a local group who gathered food and drugs for the inmates. Most limited were the possibilities of assisting prisoners in the institutions of Warta Land. The conditions were favorable during the first months after the invasion only when the invaders were forced to employ Polish prison staff and the system of internal and external supervision and surveillance had not yet been introduced to the full. In this situation, Polish guards mainly assisted inmates materially and morally and served as liaisons between them and their families. For example, a guard in the Leszno prison smuggled farewell letters of hostages wainting for execution; another one in the Rawicz prison orsanized a contact station for prisoners’ families in his own apartment; and a guard in the Kościan prison help priests to say masses in secret. Later on when few Polish guards were still in service, they could only assist inmates on a limited scale and with extreme caution. But even in this situaion, they were still willing to help. During the first months after the invasion, a Polish clerk in the Kościan prison not only assisted the inmates but also documented Nazi crimes: among other things, he kept lists of the executed. In prisons of the Warta Land district involvement of Polish prison staff in underground intelligence was practically non-existent. This was due to a rapid replacement of Polish guards and to organizational difficulties encountered by the underground in that district. Favorable conditions could be found in the Wieluń prison which had a large group of pre-war Polish Staff throughout the period of Nazi occupation. Moreover, one of prison staff leaders, reserve oficer of the Polish Army, was sworn as agent of Sieradz and Wieluń Inspectorate of the underground Armed-Struggle Union - Home Army (ZWZ AK). In prisons taken over by the invaders in Silesia district, the Nazi administration created a climate of mistrust, suspicion and intimidation with respect to Polish staff temporarily left on the job. This limited and in some cases precluded the guards’ secret contacts with inmates and their families. A special role in prison conspiracy in Silesia was played by Emil Lipowczan, forcefully recruited to the police and delegated to work as guard in Gestapo remand prison in Mysłowice. Acting for patriotic, humanitarian and religious reasons, he rendered comprehensive material and spiritual assistance to prisoners. He reached their families and warned persons threatened with arrest. He was assisted in this work by his entire family. Starting from 1943, he worked for Home Army intelligence. Once the Nazi-Soviet war broke out in June 1943, the eastern territories of Poland - previously occupied by USSR – were taken over by Nazi administration. Extremely few Polish prison guards could actually be used by the new invaders as the staff had been pacified by NKVD in 1939-1941. For this reason, prisons of Białystok district were staffed with various persons; some of them were subsequently recruited by ZWZ AK intelligence. Many a time, ZWZ AK would also appoint its members to take a job in prisons and Gestapo remand prisons and to carry out information and intelligence tasks there while at the same time assisting detained AK soldiers. Such guards only rendered material and moral assistance to other prisoners with utmost caution as a side-activity which they pursued for humanitarian reasons. In Nazi-occupied Poland (Generalgouvernement), the conditions were entirely different and more favorable for prison conspiracy. Nearly all prisons, also those subordinated to security police (except the Montelupi prison in Cracow), had Polish staff throughout the occupation. Besides, operating in ihe neighborhood of individual institutions were numerous legal, semi-legal and illegal organizations assisting prisoners and their families. Through persons who stayed in touch with the inmates, SZP-ZWZ AK would penetrate prisons on regular basis. The prison staff (pre-war guards forcefully reassigned to the job) not only assisted the inmates but also became involved in intelligence work. Tasks of this kind were performed mainly by guards purposely sent to the prison by an independence organization. Prison conspiracy has a variety of organizational forms. In Tarnyw, there was an highly centralized prison section; Lublin, instead, had several active but independent small groups of guards and duty prisoners. In Cracow, Częstochowa (prison in Senacka Street), and in a few other smaller prisons, the structure was atomized and based on independent underground work of individual guards. The extent of assistance rendered to inmates and of intelligence tasks assigned often depended on the committal and personality of the head of AK prison section; this can be said e.g. of the prisons in Jasło, Pinczów and Rzeszów. Significant was also the contribution of intelligence officers who supervised the prisons sections e.g. in Biała Podlaska, Siedlce, Wiśnicz and Zamość. Added to Generalgouvernement in August 1941 was Galicia district. Polish guards were but a small group among the prison staff of that district; they were supervised by Germans, Ukrainians and other nationalities. In such conditions, the scope of assistance to inmates was extremely limited. Yet ZWZ AK intelligence officers would get in touch even with those few Polish guards and gain them over for cooperation. Prison conspiracy in Galicia and in the remaining eastern territories consisted first of all in individual guards’ committal and performance of tasks assigned by his superior intelligence officer. This form could be found in Lvov, Pińsk, and Równe. The Nazi prison administration mistrusted Polish staff who were submitted to everincreasing surveillance by the Germans and other nationalities, and also by few quislings among Polish guards and informers among the inmates. Yet neither persecution nor repression (arrests, executions, confinements to concentration camps) applied to Polish staff could reduce the extent of assistance to political prisoners or check intelligence work in prisons.

213-225
Efektywność warunkowego przedterminowego zwolnienia (wstępne wyniki badań)

Authors: Beata Gruszczyńska, Marek Marczewski

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The article discusses preliminary findings of empirical research into effectiveness of the institution of parole. The project was carried out in 1996 within the Institute of Administration of Justice. The basic aims of the project included: a) appraisal of effectiveness of parole with respect to the entire examined population and to individual categories of convicted persons; b) analysis of conditions of effectiveness of parole. Used as the basic measure of effectiveness of parole was the index of relapse into crime, that is the fact of valid conviction for any offense after parole. The global index of relapse into crime in the examined population is the quotient of persons convicted again after parole to the total of examined persons. Analysis of effectiveness of parole based on data on further criminal records of convicted persons (from their parole in 1991 till mid-1995), obtained in April 1996 from the Central Register of Condvicted Persons (CRS) of Ministry of Justice. Factors that determined the effectiveness of parole were identified on the grounds of information obtained from two sources: penitentiary files examined with a specially prepared questionnaire, and CRS data. The questionnaire consisted of five parts concerning: a) the convicted person’s basic socio-demographic data; b) information on his psycho-physical state; c) information on his serving of the term from which he was paroled; d) data on the sentence; e) particulars of the parole granted in 1991. The general population was made up of all convicted men paroled in 1991. Sampling was stratified and proportional. Division of the general population into strata based on two-dimensional demographic-criminological criteria, that is age and previous criminal record. Obtained were 5 subpopulations: young adults; young adult recidivists; first offenders; persons with previous convictions; and adult recidivists. Selected for the original sample were 10% of convicted persons from each of the strata except the young adult recidivists: because of the small size of that particular stratum (238 persons), sampling was dropped out here and the entire stratum was included in the sample. The total of 2,142 persons were sampled. Verification of the sample followed, data on the sampled person's being confronted with those from CRS and from the records of Central Prison Administration. As a result of verification, the sample was reduced to 1,635. Of the 1,635 questionnaires, 1,552 (93%) were returned, and 1,430 of them qualified for analysis. Thus ultimately the sample included l,430 convicted persons paroled in 1991. For each examined person, the follow-up period was 42 months (three years and a half) from the moment of parole. The findings lead to the following conclusions: After parole, 41.7% of the sample relapsed into crime. Among the examined socio-demographic traits, the following prove conducive to relapse into crime: age under 21 and lack of vocational training. Psychological factors such as self-destructive acts, personality disorders, and low IQ also condition relapse into crime. Relapse into crime was significantly more frequent among young adults, young adult recidivists, and recidivists. Also conducive to relapse are: participation in the prison subculture, disciplinary penalties, and failures to return on time from pass. The factor that hinders relapse into crime is employment during the term. Relapse into crime was significantly more frequent among persons guilty of offenses against property and against family. Relapse into crime depends on the length of term served before parole: it is most frequent among persons paroled after 2 to 3 years. Other factors that also influenced relapse into crime were: previous criminal record and a prison sentence under Art. 60 from which the person was paroled in 1991. The following factors proved of no significant influence on relapse into crime: level of education; number of dependent children aged under 18; length of the sentence from which the person was paroled; length of probation; and the fact of surveillance over the paroled person.

Number XXII, 1996

7-41
Obraz przestępczości w Niemczech oraz w Polsce w okresie transformacji ustrojowej (wybrane aspekty)

Authors: Helmut Kury, Krzysztof Krajewski, Joachim Obergefell-Fuchs

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Among the negative side-effects of the fall of "Realsozialismus" in Central and Eastern Europe and the process of political, social and economic transformations initiated in 1989 there was a deterioration of internal safety in those countries. According to a popular opinion, this was manifested, among other things, by a growth - a rapid one in many instances - in the extent and intensity of crime, and also in negative changes of its structure which consisted in a particularly fast growth of tle most serious crime or emergence of its new and very dangerous forms, hitherto unknown in those countries. From this viewpoint, criminological literature in all those countries without exception has recently been presenting an extremely pessimistic picture of a growing threat of crime which can at any moment get out of control. As a consequence, fear of crime is growing in societies involved, and appeals can be heard more and more often from politicians that “law and order” be instituted. The present paper does not aim at negating either the growth of crime in post-Communist societies itself or the negative changes of the structure of crime. It is our aim first of all to compare the state of crime that follows from the two basic modern sources of information on this area, that is oflicial statistics of crime and victimization surveys, and to point to some related problems. The analysis is limited to two countries, Germany and Poland. Concerned in the former case is, of course, mainly analysis of phenomena found in the new federal lands of united Germany, that is the territory of former GDR, but also consequences of the union for the state of crime in Germany as a whole. One of the basic problems posed by analysis of extent, intensity and dynamics of reported crime, that is crime recorded in oflicial statistics in countries of Central and Eastern Europe, is reliability of statistical data from the period of “Realsozialismus” which serve as the point of departure of all comparisons. The growth in reported crime in the territory of former GDR has indeed been dramatic after 1990; yet the point of departure for comparisons involved here are GDR police statistics which showed the extent of reported crime as 10% of that in “old” FRG. Today, German criminologists agree that GDR crime statistics were regularly “improved” for ideological and political reasons, the real extent of crime being much higher there. Similar problems can be found in Poland where a rapid growth in reported crime took place only once in principle, that is in 1990. Later on, the extent of reported crime became stabilized at the new level “established” in 1990. It is highly improbable that the impact of social and economic reform on crime in Poland was limited to a “big bang” in 1990 and then ceased. Also here, we dealt rather with a specific statistical artifact and not with a single rapid growth in the extent of crime. What also speaks for this thesis is the fact that crime used to be “under-recorded” in police statistics in Poland as well through a policy of extremely selective reception by the police of information about offenses. Abandonment of this practice after 1989 resulted in a serious growth of recorded crime. Appraising the dynamics of reported crime in Central and Eastern Europe, one should also bear it in mind that the growth in crime there not necessarily followed the breakdown of “Realsozialismus”. In many countries, former USSR in particular, the growth in crime actually preceded change. Also in recent years, Central and East-European statistics have by no means been showing a constant and rapid growth in reported crime. There were rather fluctuations (if quite rapid at times), followed by a recent downward trend in some of the countries involved. Still another important problem is comparison of the extent of reported crime in post-Communist and in developed Western societies. Discussing the “flood” of crime in Central and Eastern Europe, one tends to forget that in most cases, the actual extent of crime in the region is still much lower than in most countries of Western Europe. Comparison of the situation in Germany and Poland may serve as an example here. I ulated. As far as possible, the state of crime in post-Communist societies should also be appraised on the basis of sources other than the official statistics. Helpful here can be first of all data from victimization surveys, alas still a rarity in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet basing on available data for Germany and Poland (chiefly from the International Crime Survey of 1992) it can be stated that victimization surveys show an extent of real crime much higher than the one that follows from official statistical data. This means a very high dark number of crime in Poland and elsewhere in the region, caused probably by the people’s very low tendency to report facts of victimization to the police. At any rate, from data on victimization it follows that the extent of real crime in Poland is higher as compared to Germany. This is not to say, though, that crime in Poland “breaks all the records”. With some exceptions concerning chiefly offenses against property such as theft and pickpocketing, Poland has an average extent of crime judging by European “standards'” in this respect. Basing on data from victimization surveys, also the territorial differentiation of the extent of crime in Germany and Poland can be analyzed. The basic problem in Germany is the noticeable difference between southern and northern lands, the latter having a much higher extent of crime, and also the process of the new lands “catching up” with or even “outstripping” the old ones in this respect during the last five years. Quite distinct regularities can also be found in Poland; some of them are known from earlier literature. Thus first of all, there is a noticeably higher extent of crime in Western and Northern Territories of Poland and a low extent in Wielkopolska region. It is interesting to correlate those regularities with selected demographic and socio-economic data on individual regions of the two countries. In Germany, unfavorable values of those indices found in the north of “old” FRG and in former GDR are rather explicitly correlated with a higher extent of crime. In Poland where territorial differentiation of the indices is less distinct, some regularities in this respect can nevertheless be found, too. At the samo time it seems, though, that the extent of crime in Poland is the highest in regions where, due to specific local features, the social costs of reform are the greatest and most painful.

43-83
Uzależnienie od alkoholu a religijność środowiska społecznego

Authors: Irena Szlachcicowa

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The treatment of alcoholism poses exceptionally numerous problems; what is more, it is but seldom that the traditional treatment of alcohol dependent persons (alocoholics) proves successful. The activity of Alcoholics Anonymous provides sufficient proof that the use of religious faith in the treatment of alcoholics may yield desirable results. Faith is to help alcoholics towards spiritual revival and formition of a new personality enabling them to abstain. The research project aimed at verifying a general hypothesis that religiousness may be one of catalysts of abstention during disaccustoming treatment. We sought to answer the question about the impact of religious faith on the examined alcoholics’ attitude to drinking. Thus religiousness was treated in our statistical analyses as one of the factors that condition the alcohol-related behaviour of persons in the course of disaccustoming treatment. Empirical research was conducted in the years 1984-1985 in Lower Silesia and involved four populations. The study bases on a representative sample of 322 persons treated in outpatient disaccustoming clinics (Ao) and 135 patients of hospital disaccustoming wards (Aн). Aiming to “reproduce” the social environment of alcoholics, we selected control groups (Ko) and (Kн) to match the former two populations. Each member of the control soup matched a member of the population of alcoholics in respect of the following socio-demographic traits: sex, age, marital status, place of residence, level of education, occupation and source of maintenance. Thus the above socio-demographic traits were distributed identically in the populations of alcoholics and their corresponding control groups (A=K). Not at all trivial is the role in this process of environmental factors. Alcohol consumption is not distributed evenly throughout society, the bulk of alcoholic beverages being consumed by a small proportion of Polish people. The high degree of concentration of vodka consumption indicates the existence of sociaf environments which are much more alcoholism-prone than the rest of society. For this reason, in the research project we focused on reconstruction of the characteristics of the social environments that "supply" outpatient clinics and hospitals with alcoholics. The drinking habits in the two examined populations (Aօ and Aн) differ. The differences concern both the frequency of drinking and the amount of alcohol consumed on one occasion. Some of those differences should be stressed here: porsons treated in outpatient clinics tend to drink strong alcoholic beverages more often but exercise some restraint as regards the amount consumed on one occasion. The hospital patients, instead, tend rather to get drunk whenever drinking but drink less often. Due to this difference, the risk of becoming an alcoholic is bigger in the environment that “supplies” patients to hospitals as compared to that of persons treated in outpatient clinics. Members of the population of hospital patients were somewhat younger. Frequent excessive drinking results in a high degree intoxication that speeds up the development of alcoholism in young patients. What has also to be stressed is the fact that the alcoholics’ social backgrounds differ in many other respects as well. Among hospital patients, as opposed to persons treated in outpatient clinics, there is a bigger proportion of men; they are younger (as has been mentioned above) but also polarized to a greater extent as regards age; more of them live in villages and small towns; they have no family of their own (either they have not yet established one or the family they established has already disintegrated); they have no children; they earn a lot but have no flat of their own; they are ernployed as qualified manual workers; some find it difficult to stay on a regular job. Coincidence of the above environmental conditions increases the risk of alcohol dependence. Comparison of the hospital patients’ environment with that of persons treated in outpatient clinics offers many indications that the situation of the latter can be seen as generally more advantageous. They are somewhat older (a larger proportion of them representing the middle age categories); they have families (a lower proportion being divorced), and frequently also children; and most are permanently employed. It was revealed by the project that among hospital patients, there was a larger proportion of persons from extreme sections of distribution of socio-demographic traits while most persons treated in outpatient clinics show normal distributions of those variables. It can thus be concluded that there is among the latter a much bigger proportion of persons in a generally stable life situation. Important here is their undisturbed matrimonial life and permanent employment, as the family and workmates make it possible to control the negative effects of drinking. Just as important is the fact that the compared social environments of alcoholics (Ao and Aн) are unlike each other regarding their degree of involvement in religious practices. Persons treated in outpatient clinics show consistent attitudes towards faith; this is evidenced by a distinct polarization into those who regularly participate in religious practices and persons who never go to the church at all. Among hospital patients, instead, there is a much bigger proportion of persons who are irresolute as to their own faith and take part in religious life but occasionally. Alcoholism may lead to a lowered degree of religiousness and, as a result, to a considerable decrease in, and sometimes total desistance from participation in many religious practices. The project sought to answer questions such as e.g.: What is the degree of religiousness of examined alcoholics? Is their religiousness different from that of non-alcoholic population? If so, to what extent? General religious declarations of persons treated in outpatient clinics are similar as regards their attitudes towards faith. Instead, such persons more often declare lack of religion or religious indifference which may indicate a growing polarization of attitudes (religiousness or lack of religion). Alcoholism contributes to neglect in religious duties. Persons treated in outpatient clinics attend the Sunday service less regularly than other men from a similar social enviroment. Also, fewer alcoholics go to church on Easter: a smaller proportion (as compared to that found in a similar environment) observe the Easter duty and receive the Holy Communion. The high degree of religious declarations typical of the soclal background of hospital patients is somewhat lower in the case of alcoholics themselves. The drop is distinct, instead, as regards participation in religious practices of hospital-treated alcoholics. They attend the Sunday service but occasionally, and more often fail to go to church on Easter. On the other hand, their motivation seems stronger regarding the Easter duty. The period of hospital treatment and advanced alcoholism disturb the rhythm of periodical religious practices. We analyzed the correlation between religiousness (participation in the basic religious practices) and drinking habits. Religiousness was found to stimulate a limitation of both the frequency of drinking and the amount consumed on one occasion in men from the group of persons treated in outpatient clinics (Kօ, Ao). Regular participation in religious life through performance of the obligatory practices coincides with sobriety in everyday life. Instead, religious irresolution consisting in neglect of the Sunday and Easter practices is accompanied by a radical deterioration in the sphere of drinking habits. What seems particularly important from the viewpoint of the problems under analysis is the fact that participation in religious practices (on Sundays and Easter alike) reduces the frequency of drinking in persons treated in outpatient clinics. A drop in the amount of vodka consumed by those persons on one occasion is related mainly to the Easter practice. On the other hand, the study failed to confirm good effects of religiousness on the drinking habits in the environment of hospital patients (Kн, Aн). Hospital patients are no doubt alienated from their social background to a greater extent than persons treated in outpatient clinics. This is evidenced by their late start of the disaccustoming treatment. Over 60% of hospital patients live in small and medium-sized towns as well as villages while persons treated in outpatient clinics are chiefly inhabitants of big cities (58%) and medium-sized towns (41%). This indicates weakness of disaccustoming clinics in small localities, due to their small number, understaffing, and the locals’ unawareness of alcoholism being a disease.

85-148
Działalność Komisji Specjalnej do Walki z Nadużyciami i Szkodnictwem Gospodarczym (w świetle materiałów Komisji i jej Delegatury warszawskiej)

Authors: Władysław Domagalski

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The Special Commission to Fight Corrupt Practices and Activities Detrimental to Socialized Economy operated in 1945-1954. Appointed by a decree of the the Council of Ministers in November 1945, it was to detect and prosecute offenses againts economic or social interests of state. As an institution of the machine of power of Polish stalinism, the Commision has not been studies extensively so far. Also fragmentary is the knowledge on its methods of operation on repression imposed. The sole source of such knowledge are preserved archival materials. The Special Commission operated through its subordinate branches which it appointed nationwide and in Polish diplomatic agencies abroad. Established as an extraordinary agency with special powers, it had very broad competencies and the certainty of cooperation on part of the criminal justice system. From 1950 on, it also took over a part of political cases. Although the range of offenses detected and prosecuted by the Commission had been relatively narrowly designed, the Commission’s actual competencies were very broad indeed. Members of the Special Commission were originally appointed by Presidium of the National People’s Council and then by the Council of State. The Commission’s regional agencies were its branches, submitted to its Executive Office until 1950 and then to its Chairman after the Office had been liquidated. The Branches were established in all of the then existing provinces, in four big industrial regions, and separately in the cities of Lodz and Warsaw. As the need arose, temporary branches were also formed in smaller regions. Obliged to execute the Branches’ decisions were all state and local offices, judicial authorities and prosecutor’s offices, as well as all control agencies. Members of the branches took the oath designed for judges and public prosecutors. The branches’ main task was to detect and prosecute economic offenses, including especially: appropriation and plunder of public property, corruption and bribery, profiteering, and looting of property abandoned through war events, that is actions detrimental to the interests of public life. According to the specific socio-economic nature of their individual spheres of operation, four types of branches emerged: those in the Regained Territories of Western Poland; branches operating in the main industrial regions; those in agricultural regions; and coastal branches whose work was made specific by thc existence of ports. Still another branch that can be distinguished here is the Warsaw one which dealt with the specific problems of the capital city and central offices. The Special Commission controlled its branches through briefings and, first of all, through distributed instructions. The branches were ordered to organize mass meetings with the local population, to promote their achievements in crime control, and to pursue preventive activities. The instructions stressed the need to cooperate with local social organizations and to stay in touch and cooperate with agencies of the Communist Party. Yet the agencies whose part in the work of the branches was the greatest were provincial prosecutor’s offices, courts, and the Civic Militia. The branches attaches great weight to the work of so-called Complaints Office which received both complaints and denunciations. Under the decree that established the Special Commission and a subsequent amendment of that act, cases prosecuted by the Commission were decided bv courts under the then valid law. A representative of the Commission or of its branch appeared as auxiliary prosecutor. In cases not referred to the court, the Commission had its own system of penalties to be imposed upon completion of the investigation. Imposed could be the following penalties: committal to a labor camp for up two years; forfeiture of property acquired through the offense and of objects used in its perpetration; temporary detention for 3 to 6 months; fine and other additional penalties. Until 1950, the branches could only impose fine for violation of the regulations on trade. In 1950, the system of penalties was extended, and so were the branches’ powers to impose those penalties. The accused persons were deprived of the right to be assisted by a defense counsel. Originally dealing with investigation and prosecution only, the Commission and its branches now became extrajudicial adjudicating agencies. In Decmber 1954, the Special Commission and its branches were abolished. Cases formerly examined by he Commission were handed over to courts. The problem of penalties imposed by the Special Commission and its branches was ultimately solved by the 1956 amnesty law which erased all of their decisions. The Warsaw Branch was established at a later date, that is in May 1946; apart from a brief period from 1948 till 1950, it covered Warsaw and the Warsaw province. Its specific feature was the two-sidedness of its work. On the one hand, it would examine local cases; on the other hand, being the Central Branch, it was competent with respect to the entire central state machine. Starting from 1950, the Warsaw Branch no longer conducted inquiries but only decided in cases prepared by the public prosecutor. The Warsaw Branch received information from state and local offices, private persons and social institutions, and also from other branches if the informajtion in question suggested the defendant’s or case’s connections with the central state offices. In the years 1946-1947, the Branch examined over 16 thousand cases – the biggest load of all branches - and this trend was to persist till the end of its operation. Prevailing among tle information received, in the years 1951 - 1952 in particular, were cases of profiteering. Examined most often were cases of illicit alcohol distilling, followed by malfeasance in office: corruption and bribery. In1953, the number of the latter increased twice as compared to the previous year. Among cases examined by the Branch, there were also those of plunder and appropriation of public property, trade in golt and foreign currency, and forgery of tobacco monopoly products. There were also cases of economic sabotage at the workplace. As regards the way the Branch dealt with the cases it examined, convictions prevaild especially in the 1950s. The penalty imposed most often was fine. Also in this respect, the Warsaw Branch led among its other regional counterparts. The second most frequent penalty was committal to a labor camp. Forfeiture of property was imposed just as often. The Special Commission and its branches, the Warsaw Branch included, organized preventive campaigns and special operations. The former aimed at removing circumstances conducive to crime. They were directed against groups of persons causing damage to the economy. Both types of operations often resulted in detection of abuses. Special operations involved searches. From the beginning, the main task of the Special Commission and its branches was to be detection of and fight against offenses in the economic sphere. Restructuring of the economy towards the communist system was closely related to political struggle. From 1950 on, the Commission and its branches became tools of political terror. In labor camps, agencies of the Communist Party and security services would draw up political profiles of persons for economic offenses; many a time, the profile mattered more than the offense itself. The labor camps were advised to organize socio-political education for their inmates. The Commission and its branches treated corrupt practices in state-owned farms as acts of great political importance. Similar treatment was received by offenses committed by private owners of bigger farms. The range of political “offenses” examined by the Special Commission and its branches was very broad. Among them, two groups are most distinct. One of tchem included “offenses” resulting from anti-State activity, such as keeping materials containing “false information” about State, or propagation of “false” anti-State or anti-Communist information. The other group were “offenses” reflecting a person’s attitude to the USSR, as e.g. criticizing Stalin, insulting the effigies of Stalin and Rokossovski, doubts as to the identity of those guilty of the Katyn forest massacre, criticizing kolkhozes and the Polish-Soviet alliance. In the years 1950-1954, in Warsaw and the Warsaw province, 137 severe sentences were passed for anti-State “offenses” and for those reflecting a person’s attitude to the USSR. Prosecuting those “offenses”, the Commission and its Warsaw Branch often resorted to provocation and frequently took over cases in which the Security Office failed to gather sufficient evidence. In the years of operation of the Special Commission and its branches, a person could be punished for staying in touch with his family in the West, for corresponding with embassies of Western States, keeping forbidden books, being Jehovah;s Witness, and for anything that could be classed as hostile propaganda. The Special Commission to Fight Corrupt Practices and Activities Detrimental to Socialized Economy and its Warsaw Branch have made history. They are remember convicted by those agencies were granted pardon by President of the Republic of Poland or, later on, by the Council of State. Yet the activity of the Special Commission and its Warsaw Branch could not prevent the people’s growing discontent which eventually found vent in June 1956.

149-163
Przestępczość w Rzeszowie w latach 1990-1995

Authors: Bożena Tuziak

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165 - 175
Bibliografia zawartości „Archiwum Kryminologicznego” tomy 1-3 za lata 1933-1939 i „Archiwum Kryminologii” tomy 1-21 za lata 1960-1995

Authors: Dorota Rowicka

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Number XXI, 1995

7-39
Odstraszające oddziaływanie kary na sprawcę przestępstwa w świetle badań empirycznych

Authors: Barbara Szamota-Saeki

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The number of studies on specific deterrence is not large. Some data on this subject can be found in other studies aimed e.g. at evalution of effectiveness of diffrent penal measures, or analysis of criminal careers. One of the reasons of this lack of interest in specific deterrence is a belief, rather common today and particularly marked in the 1960s, that punishment not only fails to deter the convicted person from futher offenses but – quite the contrary - increases the probability of his futher criminal carrer. Another reason is probably the great difficulty in distinguishing for research purposes of the impact of specific deterrence from the other effects of punishment. Unfortunately, a statement made by J. Gibbs over twenty years ago still remains valid: there is no theory of specific deterrence, and the hypotheses concerning specific deterrence are vague and difficult to verify empirically. During the last twenty years, there was a progress in the methodology of research into specific deterrence. New success criteria were introduced into the assessment of deterrent effect of punishment, and the method of random field experiment was used. Researchers started to compare the effect of punishment with the effects of escaning punishment, instead of limiting themselves to comparisons of relative effectiveness of some penalties as opposed to some other ones. The progress was less marked in the formation of the theory of specific deterrence. It consists in attempts, on the one hand, at a new conceptualization of the problem of deterrence, and on the other hand, at integrating the deterrence hypothesis with other theoretical approaches. The paper consists of seven parts. The Introduction (I) contains analysis of the notion of specific deterrence, the criteria to distinguish between specific and general deterrence, tvpes of deterrence. Also discussed have the recent attempts at a new conceptualization of tne problem of deterrence through inclusion into that notion of not only the “direct costs of legal sanctions” but also “indirect costs”, or through the use of another criterion to distinguish between specific and general deterrence. Chapter II contains a brief discussion of early studies on specific deterrence; the findings have been discussed and numerous methodological flaws pointed out. The conclusion from those studies (that severe penalties involve a higher recidivism rate than lenient penalties) was generally seen as a prove that punishment has no specific deterrent effect on the futher behaviour of convicted persons. This conclusion was unjustified, though. And that for several reasons. The discussed studies often failed to distinguish between the mechanism of deterrence and the other effects of punishment. They also failed to solve the problem of selection bias in sentencing where specific types of penalties are imposed on specific categories of offenders; the difference between such groups of convicted persons is that even before the imposition of penalty, the probability of their relapse into crime was different. The studies examined but a marginal effectiveness of some penalties as compared to some other ones. What they overlooked, instead, was that the growth in recidivism rate cannot be estimated which would have taken place were no criminal penalties at all imposed on offenders. Chapter III discusses the findings of studies which tested two opposing hypotheses; i.e. that punishment either deters offenders (deterrence hypothesis) or amplifies offendling (amplification hypothesis). Both the conception of deterrence and that of labeling involve too one-sided and simplified an approach to the impact of punishment on the further conduct of offenders as they ignore the possibility of effects other than the anticipated ones. This was reflected in these studies in which the researches posed instead of posing questions in the categories of “whether” (does punishment deter? does pinishment amplify affending?), instead of trying to define the conditions of emergence of each of those two effects. Analyzed in few studies only were mediating psycho-social processes between punisment and the punished pefsons’ further conduct. The findings of different studies are often inconsistent. Some seem to confirm the amplification hypothesis although researchers sometimes stress that this effect is not stable Other findings point to the effect of deterrence. Still other studies showed that: punishment seems do not influence a pefson’s further criminal career. Finally, some of the latest findings also indicate the possibility of amplifijing offending under some conditions and of deterring effect on offending - under some other circumstances. Chapter IV discusses the implications of the criminal careers approach for methodology of studies on specific deterrence. What is particularly worthy of attention here is: 1) departure from the use of a sole success criterion in the evaluation of deterrent effect of punishment, and an attempt at grasping the impact of punishment on different dimensions of criminality such as the length of criminal career or fraquency of offenses; 2) investigation of the impact of punishment at different stages of a person’s criminal career. The success criterion where success means a person’s abstention from further offenses is replaced with the before and after comparison criterion where the intensity of a person’s criminal career before and after punishment is compared; this replacement is of a great importance in studies of effectiveness of penal measures imposed on chronic offnders. As suggested by the findings, certain penalties may in cessation of delinquency at the initial stage of the criminal career (on the occasion of the first and possibly also the second contact with the police). At further stages of that career, a decrease in the intensity of delinquency of the persons convicted is possible. Chapter V discusses attempts at including the hypothesis of specific deterrence into the economic model of delinquent behawior, and studies carried out by economists. According to some economists, specific deterrence can be included into the theory of rational choice provided it is treated as a special case of general deterrence. In tlis approach, the experience of a sanction becomes a factor influencing the anticipated sanctions. Chapter VI is devoted to discussion of the results of a series of rondom field experiments conducted in selected cities of the United States. The purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of arrest as compared to other reactions to violence against a spouse (nearly all victims in the study were women). The obtained results were not uniform: in some experiments, deterrent effect of arrest was found out, while the rest showed an amplifying effect of arrest on the arrested person’s further violence against his spouse. The authors explain this divergence of results with a different impact of arrest on different types of persons. Thus the results suggest that arrest has a deterrent effect on permanently employed suspects; instead, suspects without a regular job tended to use violence more often after the arrest incident. The last Chapter (VII) recapitulates the findings. They show that it was a premature decision to reject the hyphothesis of specific deterrence. Punishment has a different impact on different persons: in some situations it results in amplication of offending; in some other ones, it deters a person from further offenses; and in still other situations it seems not to have any effect at all on furter offending. The findings point to a great importance in this respect of the first contacts with the law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the differentiated effect of punishment seems to depend on the offender’s age, sex, and attitude towards risk, and also on his permanent employment. It should be stressed that many studies use a broader definition of punishment, not limited to the penalties imposed by court. Some researchers treat even a person’s contact with the police as punishment; others believe that this function is performed by arrest. These different working definitions of punishment make it difficult to interpret the findings that relate to absolute deterrence, that is assessment of the effects of imposing punishment as compared to those of escaping punishment. Nearly all studies dealt with recidivism and, first and foremost, the effectiveness of punishment in reducing a person’s further delinquency. To a slight extent only did they try to define the meaning of punishment for those punished, their subjective estimations of probability and severity of punishment. For this reason, interpretation of the findings in the categories of stating whether punishment has a deterrent effect is not always justified.

41-79
Prawo karne wobec środków odurzających i psychotropowych (z problematyki teorii kryminalizacji)

Authors: Krzysztof Krajewski

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The present policy of all countries of the world towards narcotic and psychotropic drugs is in fact prohibitionIST. This means that all circulation of such drugs ‒ their manufacture, transport, import, export, introduction into trade, giving, and sometimes also possession – is illegal and carries most severe penal sanctions in some cases. It should be borne in mind, though, that this prohibition is ONLY about eighty years old now. Before, despite a large numer of addicts (not at all smaller than today according to some estimations), purely medical approach to such persons prevailed, and the drugs were subject only (if at all) to some administrative control and rationing at most. The drug prohibition emerged immediately after World War I, chiefly in United Stetes. As can be judged today, the criminalization of drugs and addicts introduced in those days was highly emotional. For this reason, by no means the harmfulness of narcotic and psychotropic drugs on both the individual and the social scale, one should consider the use and reasons of prohibitive policy from the viewpoint of today’s standards of rational criminalization. It is unquestionable that any social policy with respect to drugs should aim first and foremost at reduction of their consumption. The question remains, though, about the extent to which prohibition and penal law can actually serve towards this aim. Universal in the world of today as it is, the prohibitive approach to drugs assumes a variety of forms. There are different models of prohibition which base on different penal law regulations. They can be classified in two dimensions: restrictiveness vs. permissiveness, and repressiveness vs. treatment. Te first of the above dimensions pertains to the extent of criminalization; the other one – to treatment by the law of addicted offenders. Restrictive systems are those which provide for absolute prohibition with no exceptions whatever and ban all circulation of drugs, possession included. Instead, permissive systems provide for an extent of decriminalization of that circulation, chiefly with respect to possession of drugs. Involved here is usually decriminalization, or even total depenalization of possession of specific amounts of drugs or drugs possessed for a specific purpose as e.g. own consumption. This depenalization can be introduced not only by substantive law but also by procedural provisions law. In this latter case, elements of expediency are introduced, offering the prosecutor or court the possibility to discontinue proceedings or to drop the charge. Repressive systems treat addicted offenders like all the other offenders, applying to them regular penal sanctions both for traditional criminal offenses (as e.g.. theft), and for the “prohibitive” ones (such as possession of drugs). Treatment-oriented systems, instead, reflect a belief as to futility of punishing addicts: within tchem, attempts are made at implementing a principle “tratment instead of punishment”. In most cases, this means that an addict can avoid penal sanction if he submits to withdrawal treatment. The actual application of such provisions on conditional stay of proceedings usually depends on the seriousness of the offense committed. It can be stated that most of today’s European legislations try more or less consistently to combine elements of permissiveness with the treatment orientation. Particularly useful in the analysis of the reason and sense of prohibition are specific economic notions and categories used successfully within so-called economic approach in criminology: demand and supply. Therefore, to what extent are prohibition and penal law capable of reducing the demand for narcotic and psychotropic drugs? First, the demand for those substances is created by a great variety of categories of individuals. The first such category are the consumers. This group, however, is by no means uniform as it consists of both addicted persons, occasional users, and experimenters. Another group which is of great importance in terms of the aims of prohibition are potential consumers, that is practically the whole of socjety if we take the extreme approach. Penal law can influence those groups through its instruments of special and general prevention. The possibilities of applying individual prevention to addicts or occasional users are minimal, though, which results from the very essence of addiction. It is a general opinion today that punishment cannot force an addict to give up his addiction. Only therapy can potentially be successful here; but – an extremely important issue – therapy to which a person submits voluntarily. Today’s spread of this opinion is expressed in the above-mentioned principle of “treatment instead of punishment”. It means that, the very principle of prohibition preserved, penal repression with respect to addicts is avoided. In this interpretation, the individual preventive action of punishment is reserved for the group of persons who experiment with drugs (as it would be simply impossible to criminalize a mere wish to take drugs). The question still remains, though, whether punishment as a form of shock therapy makes any sense here. The general preventive effect of penal law assumes the forms of either deterrence or so-called positive prevention. Deterrence is entirely out of the question in the case of addicted drug consumers due to the considerable rigidity of their demand. Yet deterrence is just as inefficient with respect to potential consumers. This is caused by a huge dark number of “prohibition”, resulting from their specific nature of offenses without no victims: the police encounter immense difficulties trying to disclose such acts. Most legislators try to make up for these weak points introducing severe statutory penalties. This is ineffective in the light of the long-discovered truth that it is rather inevitability than severity of punishment that determines the effectiveness of deterrence. A similar problem arises with respect to potential integrative function of penal law. The question is whether this kind of function – consisting in reinforcement of specific values with the aim to integrate a group – can really be performed by relatively seldom euforced provisions such as no doubt the penal law provisions designed to safeguard prohibition. What remains, therefore, is just the argument, classically used when discussing the problem of decriminalization, that this step might be interpreted as a consent to a specific behavior (here, the taking of drugs) which, in turn, might have disastrous consequences. In this interpretation, prohibition is the last outpost to curb completely unrestrained spread of drug addiction. Penal law's inability to exert any crucial influence on demand considered, it is assumed more and more often today that prohibition aims basically at reducing the supply of drugs. The application of penal law to this area is justified to the extent that its addressees are not addicts but manufacturers, smugglers, dealers and other such persons most of whom are not drugs consumers themselves but only derive profit from the addiction of others. No doubt, penal law sometimes succeeds to eliminate such persons by means of incapacitation or deterrence. Generally, though, there is a specific and important internal contradiction involved in prohibition: delegalization of drugs in a situation of continued demand makes the provision of supply a most attractive activity since it yields immense profits. As a result, not even the most severe penalties can either deter those involved in this activity or prevent the recruitment of their successors, the less so as the risks they run are actually rather small for reasons that have been mentioned above. It might perhaps prove possible to eliminate all supply of drugs, but not without the use of universal terror. This option, however, is out of the question in a democratic state governed by the ruled by law. Therefore, are there any alternatives to prohibition? The answer seems to be yes. First and foremost, one should realize the crucial problem of today’s drug addiction is demand. Admittedly, the demand for drugs can be seen as a apecific cultural constant, something we have to put up with. One should bear in mind, however, the attempts at influencing that phenomenon with constructive and creative rather than destructive methods. Quite obviously, this is an extremely difficult and entangled task – as difficult and entangled as any struggle against the couses and not just the synptoms of a social problem. It seems, however, that work on developing constructive strategies to fight the demand for drugs is the basic challenge of modern civilization. Namely, if we manage to gain any influence over the couses that make so many young people of today reach for drugs – if we manage to cause a reduction of that demand – departure from prohibition and resumption of the purely medical approach to drugs might perhaps become possible. For this reason, decriminalization or legalization of drugs should be seen today as a long-term strategic aim; before it can actually be achieved, prolonged preparations, experiments, small steps strategies, and chiefly efforts towards reduction of demand by methods other than repression are necessary. I believe it would be too risky if we tried to run this operation straight away and to leave the matter to be regulated by nothing but the forces of the free market. Finally, the fact has to be borne in mind that decriminalization can only be sensible if it is done globally; this means that such decision require close international co-operation and co-ordination.

81-103
Zachowania dewiacyjne młodzieży w Warszawie w 1993 r. (badania typu self-report)

Authors: Anna Kossowska, Jacek Krawczyk, Irena Rzeplińska

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1. The findings discussed in the paper have been obtained within an international research project aimed at comparing the extent of self-reported deviant behavior of youth 11 West-European countries (Finland, England, Nord Ireland the Netherland, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, portugal, Greece, Spain and Italy), the United States and New Zealand. The questionnaire ultimately used in all countries participating in the project resulted from long negotiations and was in fact a compromise. It contained questions about both the respondents’ deviant behavior and their social situation with consideration to variables of importance from the viewpoint of the theory of social control. Deviant behavior was divided into the following six groups: l) behavior manifesting social maladjustment (as.e.g. truancy or stealing rides); 2) destruction of objects (vandalism); 3) appropriation of another person’s property; 4) aggressive behavior; 5) alcohol consumption; and 6) drug taking and selling. Examined were young people from Warsaw, born in the years 197l‒1978; the sample consisted of 701 persons aged 14‒21 at the time of the survey. At the moment of the interview, 80.5 % of respondents either had a job or went to school. Most respondents (65.9%) stated they were on good terms with their father. Even a greater proportion of 88.5% were on good terms with their mother. Ten percent of the sample had no contacts whatever with their father, and a much smaller proportion (2.3%) ‒ with their mother. Apart from 42 persons, respondents stated they had real friends; over a half had one to three such friends. The rest mentioned larger groups as their friends. Forty-seven percent had a girl- or boyfriend; two-thirds would like the relationship to last. Of the examined 363 boys, 84.8% had played truant from school at least once for one day. The proportion tended to grow bigger with respondents’ age. It showed a regular upward trend from 50% among the14-year-olds to 100% among boys of 23. Of the examined 383 girls, played truant, with the proportion reaching its peak value of l00% among the 2l-year-olds, and showing an upward trend from 33.3% among the 14-year-olds to 97.4% among girls of 19. Another widespread phenomenon was stealing rides on city buses, trolley buses, or trams. Those who had stolen a ride at least once constituted 95.9% of the boys and 89.3% of the girls. Stealing rides on trains or intercity buses was much less widespread. It was admitted by 35.8% of the boys and 22% of the girls. Driving a car or motorcycle without a license or a motorbike without a bicycle permit was admitted by 52.6% of the boys and 29.9% of the girls. A further act we inquired about was painting or spraying walls, buses, bus seats and stops, etc. Such acts were admitted by 22.9% of the boys and 12.7% of the girls. Still another group of acts qualified as vandalism includes acts that result in destruction of or damage to property. The largest group of both boyg and girls tend to vandalise school furniture (22.3% of the boys and 13% of the girls), as well as trees, bushes and flowers in parks and squares (18.2 and 10.1% respectively). Asked whether they had ever carried any weapon, such as a knife, club, knuckle-duster, or gas pistol, 43.3% of the boys and 26.6% of the girls answered in the affirmative. Relatively large were the proportions of boys (25.9%) and girls (10.7%) who had ever participated in brawls or group disturbances in a public place. A proportion of 7.2% of the boys and 1.8% of the girls admitted having beaten a stranger. Cases of beating a family member were occasional: they were admitted by 1.4% of the boys and 0.6% of the girls. Also a small proportion of 3.3% of the boys and 1.3% of the girls admitted having wounded another person with a knife, club or another weapon. Intentional arson was admitted by 5.5% of the boys and 1.2% of the girls. Offenses against property or acts consisting in appropriation of property without the knowledge or consent of its owner were related frequent in the sample. Of the 702 young persons, 55.1% had committed at least one of the listed fourteen categories of acts. This proportion is rather big the fact considered that average young people were examined. Of the 14 categories of acts against property consisting in its appropriation, the youth most often admitted shoplifting, purchasing stolen property, breaking and entering, and thefts at school. Questions relating to drugs concerned two points: the taking of drugs and their selling by respondents. The drugs inquired about were divided into two categories, each of them asked about separately: marihuana and hashish (the first category); and home-made poppy straw brew, heroin, cocaine and LSD (the second category). A proportion of 16.5% admitted having ever taken marihuana or hashish. Boys admitted this behawior more often than girls (with proportions of boys and girls balanced in the sample): every fifth boy and every eighth girl had experiences with this category of drugs. A much smaller proportion of 2% admitted having ever taken the second category of drugs. Answers stating that the respondent had ever taken marihuana or hashish were evenly distributed in the sample and tended to become more frequent with age. The declared use of the second category of drugs was very rare and evenly distributed in age groups from 16 to 21. Ten persons, among them 9 boys, admitted having sold marihuana or hashish. Most were aged 16‒18, that is still went to school. They stated that the police had never learned about their doings. Four persons admitted having sold the second category of drugs. They had sold amphetamine, cocaine, or psychedelic drugs in their neighborhood. None had been caught at the act. Asked, “Have you ever drunk beer, wine, vodka or another alcoholic beverage?”, nearly the entire sample (95.9% of the boys and 94.7% of the girls) answered in the affirmative. Asked about the age of their first contact with alcohol, 3.7% mentioned the age of under ten; 19.8% ‒10‒14; 48.3% ‒ 14‒16; and 17.l% ‒ 17‒21. The proportion of respondents who had happened to get drunk at least once was 56.3%. Asked about drinking during the year preceding the survey, 93.6% said they had drunk in that period; 50.3% admitted having drunk on up to 10 occasions, 18.1% ‒ on ll‒24 occasions, 10.6% ‒ on 25‒50 occasions, and 20.9% ‒ on over 50 occasions. The last time before the survey, the respondents drank: beer (43.8%), vodka (35.6%), wine (27.6%), and long drinks (10%). A majority of 86.5% drank in the company of others; under 10% had one companion, two-thirds of the rest drank in a group of 2‒10 persons, and the remaining ‒ in a larger company. In the international survey, national samples were examined in four countries (Switzerland, England and Wales, Portugal, and the Netherlands). In Spain, the survey concerned a large national urban sample. Examined in further two countries (Germany and North Ireland) were random samples from specific cities (Mannheim and Belfast respectively). Four other countries decided to examine a random sample of school youth from a specific city (Helsinki; three ltalian cities: Genova, Messina and Siena; Liege). The United States and New Zealand were left out from comparisons. Thus in principle the findings to be compared were not necessarily comparable. Yet it seems advisable to discuss the general trends shown in national surveys. What, therefore, are the similarities and dissimilarities between Poland and Western Europe? As regards the incidence of delinquency, considerable similarities can be noticed between findings of all national surveys but the English one. In surveys of city samples (those of school youth included), significant similarity can be noticed in the extent of delinquent acts “ever committed” by the young of Warsaw, Helsinki, and Athens. As regards the extent of acts committed “during last year”, the findings obtained in Warsaw are highly similar to those for Helsinki. In Athens, instead, the greatest extent of juvenile delinquency of all examined cities was found. A comparison of acts committed “during last year” indicates a similar intensity of offenses against property among the youth of Warsaw, Belfast, and Liege; as compared to Warsaw, a much greater extent of there offences is found in Helsinki and of Swiss youth, and a decidedly smaller one - in the English and Italian sample. Submitting offenses against property to a closer analysis, one notices that the Polish youth relatively more often commit acts consisting in “breaking and entering” as compared c.g. to young people in England, the Netherlands, or Finland: this type of act was committed at least once by 20.7% of the Polish sample, by 14.9% of the youth of Helsinki, by 3.4% of the English youth, and by 6.9% of the young Dutch. The extent of acts related to drugs (taking and trafficking), among Warsaw youth is similar to that among the young of Portugal and Helsinki, somewhat lower than among the Dutch and Spanish youth, much lower than among the English, Swiss, and Belfast young people, but higher than among the youth of Mannheim, Liege, Athens and the three Italian cities.

105-134
Prestiż zawodu sędziego i społeczny wizerunek instytucji wymiaru sprawiedliwości

Authors: Antoni Bielewicz

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In Poland, the level of social confidence in a profession results mainly from: qualifications necessary for the pursuit of that procession; respect for the values to which the profession is particularly related, which it is to serve and to protect; the social usefulness of that profession; the degree of responsibility involved in the tasks performed; the arduousness of work; the level of material profits derived; the extent of power involved in the profession; tradition; social respect for the institutions in which persons pursuing that profession are employed; those persons’ professional, social and moral attitudes. From a comparative analysis of many research findings it follows that the legal professions rank relatively low in the hierarchy of prestige. Certain changes have been taking place in this respect during the las 50 years; yet the legal profession still enjoys a rather low level of social acceptance which is rather astonishing: a lawyer has all the traits valued by Polish society. In the period of Polish People’s Republic, the relatively low prestige of the legal profession resulted from the then valid doctrine, state policy, the system of administration of justice, and the attitudes and conduct of judges, public prosecutors, and barristers, In Polish People’s Republic, the law was not an independent value. It was to support the “historical process” and serve not justice itself but rather “historical justice”. It became the tool of social engineering which was to create a new society. Statutory law was transformed into a comprehensively_ oriented instrument of political action ‒ a utilitarian means of government. The legislation was to implement a political, social and economic program imposed from above. There was a dramatic drop in the importance of law as the exponent of values. This was due to a loosening of its natural relation to the sense of morality and justice. A number of decrees and statutes were passed, usually according to the valid procedure but lacking inner justness; they were called law but were essentially utterly lawless in many cases. For this reason, the social sense of justness seldom followed from statutory law; instead, it existed outside of the law so to say. The law-citizen relation included pathological elements. Most of the social experiences of contacts with law and its representatives were negative. The law seldom defended the citizen, especially against arbitrary decisions of the authorities; it usually punished him. The regulatory functions of law yielded precedence to its repressive functions. The conception of unity of state pover ruled out all independence of the judiciary in Polish People’s Republic. The courts were subordinated to the executive authority not only in terms of administration but also to a large extent in their jurisdiction. This resulted from the very procedure of appointing and removing judges; the wide discretion to remove judges; the organization of supervision over judicial decisions; the terms of office of the Supreme Court; the practice of guiding principles for the judiciary, issued by the Supreme Court and binding for all courts. Appointment of desired benches and selection of cases, changes of the benches during proceedings, requests for court files during proceedings, summons of judges to one Ministry or another, individual and organized pressure – all of these were by no means exceptional situations in the courts of Polish People’s Republic. Judicial independence ultimately depends on the judge himself. A part of judges compromised on the norms of professional ethics and on common morality. The actual numer of “obedient” judges is difficult to estimate today. Even if they were few, that was certainly enough for the people’s confidence in courts to be shaken. It would be wrong to believe that the above processes, phenomena and facts remained unnoticed by the people. Society were fully aware of the functions assigned to the law and tasks of the institutions of administration of justice. The opinion knew many examples of public prosecutors, judges and barristers departing from the basic norms of the code of professional ethics. The authorities themselves saw to it, publishing resolutions of the Supreme Court and providing extensive coverage of many trials. Thus social attitudes towards the law, institutions of administration of justice and their representatives eroded continuously. Society had no confidence in the effectiveness of recourse to the law in vindication of one’s claims; they fully realized whose interests the public prosecutor’s oflices and courts actually guarded. The prosecutors and judges were perceived chiefly as functionaries of state. Paradoxically, in a totalitarian system where violations of individual rights were a common everyday practice, the lawyer hardly helped the citizens. The social usefulness of the lawyers’ professional roles grew smaller, and so did their prestige. In coming years the prestige of the legal professions will no doubt go up. This will be a result of: a general consolidation of the role of law in the life of state and society; development of a new law-citizen relation; an increased regulatory function of the law; financial promotion of the legal professions; and improved social image of institutions of administration of justice. There is much to indicate that social regard for the legal professions will eventually reach the Western level. The proces of the Polish hierarchy of prestige of individual professions becoming “European” will inevitably result in its losing its former “proletarian” nature; this will be expressed in a drop in social regard for workers. Already going down today is the pristige of miners, and also of teachers. From 1987 till 1993, the proportion of respondents who declared the greatest regard for miners and teachers dropped by 14 and 4 points respectively. Thus the distance between a judge and a miner dropped by 26, and that between a judge and a teacher – by 16 points. The social image of judges and institutions of administration of justice is shaped by the Poles’ twofold experience: the still fresh memory of “the past” and the not yet really known “present day”. The past meant obedient judges; courts as an extension of the arm of power; sentences clashing with the sense of justice etc. The present day means rampant corruption; frustration: inner dysfunction of the system; lack of skill in resolving matters which the people see as self-evident. The public opinion have not yet fully developed a view on judges and the institutions of administration of justice. A half of respondents believe that courts do good service to society, one-fifth think the opposite, and another one-fifth have no standpoint on the matter. Thus actually two parallel images of courts operate in the social consciousness. Groups which perceive the reality through glasses of the past, so to say, seek yesterday in today’s courts. The future-oriented groups, instead, tend to define those institutions in the categories of the still distant tomorrow. For this reason, even a relatively not too controversial decision taken by the judicial authority brings about an avalanche of the gravest accusations, that of attempting to restore the past included. The psychological conflict is hardly to the court’s advantage: an image still lingers in the social subconscious which prevents society from honestly appraising their work. Also political circumstances are not too favorable for institutions of administration of justice. The active involvement of representatives of the law in resolution of disputes which the opinion define as political makes them party to the conflict in the eyes of society. Past experiences have shown how convenient a tool the court can be in political struggle. Also the Government’s activity bears on the social image of administration of justice. For one year now, the most vehemently criticized area of the Government’s work is its policy of “crime control”. It has been called ineffective by a half of society. An average citizen is convinced that the police, prosecutors, and courts are equally responsible for this situation. The condition of courts with which a large portion of society have contacts is hardly helpful in the building of those institutions’ prestige: dilapidated buildings in desperate need of repair; old worn out furniture; small, underqualified and underpaid and thus frustrated office staff. Added to this should be excessive bureaucracy, obscure procedures, distant time limits, high court fees, excessive fees charged by barristers. The courts have already started regaining social trust but the process is bound to be a slow one. Practically each and every slip of the judicial authority, eagerly pointed out by the media, may well reverse the emerging favorable trend in the attitude of public opinion. Social attitudes towards the courts are incomplete and based largely on emotions which is what makes them unstable. The emerging trend can be consolidated by e.g. closer contacts of the judicial community with society, established chiefly through the media. Yet the new image of Polish courts depends first and foremost on the success of the process of building of state ruled by law.

135-152
Polityka karna w sprawach o wykroczenia w początkach lat dziewięćdziesiątych

Authors: Jerzy Szumski

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The paper describes and appraises the policy of prosecution and punishment in cases of transgressions in the years 1990‒1994, i.e. after the systemic transformations in Poland. It is a continuation of a study of penal policy carried out while the former Code of Transgressions was still in force; the aim now is to draw a comparison between the old and new tendencies in the practice of prosecution and punishment. The comparison, however, encounters specific difficulties. The first reason for this is that a full judicial control over decisions of transgression boards was introduced and the boards were submitted to the Ministry of Justice supervision. The second reason is that the statistical data gathered now by that department are much scantier as compared to those formerly gathered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs while the transgression boards were still subordinated to it. In the seventies, a systematic aggravation of the penal policy took place. Admittedly, that policy was then temporarily mitigated with the birth of Solidarity; yet after the imposition of martial law in 1982, followed by the passing of the 1985 act, penal policy once again grew repressive, this time much more so. Then, at the close of the past decade, as a result of social pressure, penal policy was quite distinctly liberalized. To show the transformations of that policy in the nineties, it has usually been compared to the tendencies found in both a “repressive” year of 1987 and a “liberal” one of 1988. As follows from analysis of the prosecution policy measured by the number of motions for punishment submitted to transgression boards, the number of such motions was greatly reduced in the years 1990-1994 as compared to preceding decades. The fact considered that recorded crime went up distinctly in that period, as probably did also the number of petty infringements of the law – that is, transgressions – this reduction can be interpreted as a limitation of the scope of prosecution with respect to such acts. On the one hand, this resulted from a lowered activity of the police, on the other hand – from the force’s aim towards improving their image in society. A similar trend could be found in the case of police orders the number of which was also reduced. Characteristically, the average fine imposed by police order amounted to not even a half of the statutory upper limit. This notwithstanding, a draft amendment of the code of transgressions was published in the Spring of 1994 which suggested that the limit be raised tenfold; the draft also provided for an identical raise in the upper limit of fine as a main penalty, This solution was sharply criticized by the present author as its actual implanentation would result in a general aggravation of economic repression. The structure of transgressions for which the boards imposed punishment in the nineties underwent a rather significant change: the number of persons brought before the boards for traffic transgressions went up considerably (to about 70%) while that of persons guilty of disturbance of public order went down. This latter trend should be seen as advantageous since the formerly mass-scale prosecution of perpetrators of such acts, most of them alcohol dependent, was generally considered futile. Also liberalized was the structure of penal measures imposed on all perpetrators of transgressions. Admittedly, fine remained the prevalent response (about 95% of decisions); yet the proportion of the strictest measures (arrest and limitation of liberty) went down distinctly, and that of the most lenient ones (reprimand and renouncement of inflicting punishment) went up. The fact considered that the penalty of arrest was limited to the minimum and imposed chiefly on persons guilty of the acts that are to be classified as offenses under the draft of the Penal Code, the proposed preservation of that penalty in the future Code of Transgressions cannot be praised. This same conclusion is also true for conditional suspention the execution of arrest which is nearly a dead institution in practice. As clearly follows from statistical data used in the present analysis, changes in the structure of penal measures imposed reflected a mitigation of penal policy. Instead, no data are gathered as to the severity load of those measures. This situation is bound to provoke criticism, chiefly because of the lack of data on the amounts of fines. Fines being the most frequently imposed measures, their amounts constitute the basic index of punitiveness of the boards’ decisions. The fact considered that the statutory amount of fine was last raised in 1992 while nominal wages showed a regular upwards trend, the conclusion is justified that we in fact dealt with what was perhaps an unintended mitigation of the actual severity of economic repression. As follows from the principles of rational penal policy, the provions legal in force have to be to be amended. Due, however, to pauperization of society, the raise in the maximum statutory fine cannot be as drastic as suggested in the above-mentioned draft amendment of 1994. This might well lead to revival of the once pursued practice of using fines as an instrument of adding to the budget. The statistical data under analysis also provide no information on the imposition of additional penal measures, the sole exception being prohibition of operating motor driven vehicles. All that can be observed is a very serious growth in the proportion of this latter penalty which was due to a mass prosecution of perpetrators of petty traffic offenses. Characteristically, though, the incidence of imposition of this measure on such persons (those additionally guilty of drunken driving included) has been on a regular decrease. Also astonishing is the fact that despite the introduction of judicial review of the boards’ decisions (which had been postulated for many decades by the scientific circles), no statistical data are gathered showing the extent to which penal policy pursued by those boards is actually corrected by courts. Admittedly, it follows from the findings of the solo relevant research project conducted in the nineties that today as in the past, courts usually tend to reduce the penalties imposed by transgression boards (the penalty of prohibition of operating motor driven vehicles in particular). What remains unknown, though, is both the general number of persons who demand that their cases be examined by courts and the actual decisions of those courts. Although penal policy in cases of transgressions grew slightly more severe in 1990‒1994, its present liberalization as compared to the two preceding decades is generally seen as favorable. What probably accounts for this liberalization is the exclusion of transgression boards from under the supervision of Ministry of Internal Affairs and the resulting deprivation of the head of that particular Ministry of the right to issue instructions as to the sentencing policy which invariably increased its punitiveness. Thus an instrument of pressure was abolished which limited the discretion of members of transgression boards. This shows that respect for the independence of those appointed to apply tbe law may result in a reduction of repressiveness even with no legislative changes in the system of penal measures. This is not to say, though, that – still based on rigorous provisions as it is – the system does not require a possibly prompt amendment.

153-189
Ułaskawienia Prezydenta Bieruta. Losy wniosków o ułaskawienie skazanych przez sądy wojskowe (1947-1952)

Authors: Grzegorz Wojciechowski

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The study deals with the procedure and practice of granting pardons by the President of Republic of Poland Bolesław Bierut to persons convicted ty mortial courts. Analyzed have been the years 1947–1952, that is President Bierut’s term in office. Before, in the years 1944–1947, he was President of the National People’s Council, and afterwards, from 1952 till his death in 1956 – President of the Council of State. The 1947–1952 period has been selected for analysis not only for the above formal reason of President Bierut’s term in office. Bierut had the powers to grant pardons also as President of the National People’s Council (1944–1947) and, later on, as President of the Council of State (1952–1956). Thus the years 1947–1952 have been chosen for substantive reasons, too, as they were the period of particularly intense penal repression applied by courts mortial in Poland. It was directed chiefly against political opponents – real and alleged alike – of the new regime. Finally, the archival resources of the Civil Chancellery of President of Republic of Poland, kept in the Archives of New Files in Warsaw, make it possible in principle to fully reconstruct the procedure and practice of granting pardons. In the years 1947–1952, while holding the office of President of Republic of Poland, Bolesław Bierut was also leader (lst Secretary) of the ruling Colmmunist Party: first the Polish Workers’ Party and then, from December 1948 on, Polish United Workers’ Party. The author discusses the particularly repressive nature of law as applied by courts mortial to which also common courts reported. He also points out that the law was infringed quite freely by the investigating agencies, public prosecutors, and finally by courts mortial. Severe penalties were therefore imposed not only on the real but also on alleged opponents of the new regime. The investigating and prosecuting agencies concocted criminal cases of persons who were innocent under the law, and the courts sentenced those persons. This way, the Polish administration of justice was involved in political struggle. Its ideological justification was provided by Joseph Stalin’s theory of intensification of class struggle with progressing building of so-called “socialism” which found it legal expression in a theory, formulated by a Soviet politician and lawyer Andrei Vishinsky, on the defendant’s admission of guilt (forced by torture, of course) as the crown evidence in judicial proceedings. The author stresses that in his capacity as leader of the ruling Party and at the same time Head of State, Bolesław Bierut actually initiated many political trials based on faked investigation and often leading to the defendant being sentenced to death by a court mortial. According to the statutory procedure, such defendants then petitioned President Bierut for pardon which means that the case actually made a full circle. The author states that the middle level agencies of administration of justice notified the leaders of the ruling Party of glaring breaches of the law but the information never met with any response. The author points to numerous formal defects in the application of the pardon procedure; for example, some decisions refusing pardon do not even bear the President’s signature. The petitions, filed by the convicted person or his family or examined ex officio were in most cases accompanied by a negative opinion of the Supreme Military Court and Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office. There were cases in which a person sentenced to death in summary proceedings was actually executed without the obligatory pardon procedure. In one case, pardon was probably refused after the actual execution. The opposite also happened: convicted persons were not executed despite the fact that pardon had been refused to them. The reason was that they were needed in other penal proceedings. The duration of pardon proceedings – of special importance in the case of death sentences – was not regulated by law and ranged from three days to three months. The author analyzes petitions for pardon filed by persons convicted by courts mortial. There were the total of 2,591 such petitions, including 1,813 (about 70%) filed by persons sentenced to capital punishment. The President of Republic of Poland pardoned 589 persons or 32% of all those sentenced to death. There were among them both common criminals and political offenders. It is most difficult to guess the motives of the President (or his closest associates) which guided his decisions on pardon. In some cases, he simply followed the opinion of persons with whom he reckoned. The President’s discretion – the essence of the right of pardon – can be supposed to have played the smallest part. The procedure and practice of the exercise by President of Republic of Poland of his right of pardon was among the elements of the practice of lawbreaking in Poland in the years 1947–1952.

191-220
Warszawska konspiracja więzienna 1939-1944 (udział polskiego personelu)

Authors: Krystian Bedyński

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Taken over by the Nazi in September 1939, Polish prisons became not only the gallows of many thousands of Poles but also the site of heroic struggle against the invaders ‒ a struggle in which both the inmates and the Polish prison staff were involved. Warsaw prisons, especially the Pawiak prison, became symbols of martyrdom of the Polish nation and of persistent struggle fought by soldiers of the underground Polish State. The Polish prison staff were obliged to stay in service during the Nazi occupation of Poland for two reasons. The first one resulted from the Nazi authorities’ order that all Polish employees should resume work; acts of sabotage carried severe sanctions. The other reason was related to the policy of the Penal Department, revived by the invaders in the territory of Nazi-occupied Poland and renamed the Central Prison Administration in 1940. Its rudimentary powers included, among other things, the staffing of prisons in the Warsaw district. In October 1939, the institution summoned the prison staff to resume work: this staff policy was designed to improve the psychological situation of inmates, to facilitate material assistance to prisoners, the political ones in particular, and to help create in the future, basing on the Polish staff, the structures of prison intelligence service of underground organizations. The actual decisions of individual members of the prison staff were prompted by a variety of motivations: a fear of the consequences of sabotaging the Nazi orders; a sense of being subordinated to Polish prison administration; and a need to secure one’s own source of maintenance. Many functionaries were also ideologically motivated: by a wish to help imprisoned Poles or subordination to suggestions or orders coming from persons involved in the arising structures of anti-Nazi conspiracy. Having made up his mind to work in a prison under Nazi administration, each and every member of the prison staff faced the problem of defining his attitude towards prisoners in general, and political prisoners in particular. Under Nazi occupation, the actual contents of the notion of “political prisoner” did not correspond with its former statutory definition. The need for a different attitude to political prisoners, against the prison regulations and the orders of Nazi authorities, resulted from the situation of occupation, the ever-intensifying terror, the Nazis’ attitude tu prisoners and to Polish staff, the pressure from society, and the cxpectations formulated in this rcspect by the first underground organizations. In this situation, most of the Polish prison staff developed a protective attitude to political prisoners, aimed at the greatest possible liberalization of provisions of the prison rules and, to an extent determined by reasons of their own safety, actually sabotaged Nazi instructions. Such attitudes could be found as early as October 1939 in a prison in Daniłowiczowska street and in “Serbia” (women’s ward of the Pawiak prison); they persisted till the closing of Polish prisons, whatever the restrictions imposed on Polish prison staff during the occupation. The most widespread form of assisting prisoners was to pass on news from inmates to their families or other persons and vice versa. The staff also secretly supplied inmates with food, medication, cigarettes, and books. Also religious practices were permitted against the regulations, and imprisoned priests could say masses and render religious assistance and services to their fellow inmatess. This attitude of Polish prison staff was reinforced by the activities of newly- formed underground organizations which tried to get in touch with the inmates by winning over the Polish staff members. Organized intelligence in Warsaw prisons started in early November 1939 when the Headquarters of Poland’s Victory Service were notified by a prison staff member of the imprisonment of the Mayor of Warsaw Stefan Starzyński in the Daniłowiczowska street prison. Having received this signal, an Headquarters oflicer Emil Kumor started winning over the staff of the succession of prisons in which the Mayor of Warsaw was kept. Regular activities towards the building of prison intelligence structures were started late in November 1939 by the head of Information and Propaganda Department of Poland’s Victory Service Warsaw Headquarters, Zygmunt Hempel. In each of the prisons, he managed to win over an officer of the prison staff; sworn under the organization’s bylaws, those officers, were charged with the task of forming prison intelligence networks in their respective institutions. A special stress on the building and functioning of this type of network for communication with inmates was laid in the Pawiak prison, a security police jail. The prison intelligence network included internal network (function holders among the inmates, members of prison staff); external liaisons (prison staff); and external network (persons in charge of contact points, liaisons). This communication network was io acquire information about the circumstances of detention, the course of inquiry, the degree to which the entire organization was endangered, etc. Instructed by the organization, the intelligence network members among the prison staff passed on information, supplied food, medication (poison in some cases), things to help organize an escape, and underground press. They also prepared copies of lists of new admissions and of persons transported to concentration camps, executed, or murdered. They warned prisoners against Nazi agents and other dangers, and facilitated contacts between partners. Till mid-1942, there operated in Polish prisons, the Pawiak prison in particular, numerous structures of communication between inmates and underground organizations; they were independent of one another and varied as to the degree of organization. Acting as their liaisons were many a time the same members of prison staff; many of them only learned after 1945 for which underground organization they had been working. Beside performing the organizational tasks, those same functionaries often undertook, for humanitarian reasons, to establish illegal contacts with individual prisoners upon request of those persons’ families. Ultil mid-1942, the underground communication with inmates was spontaneous, largely improvised, and chaotic, and those involved in it tended to ignore even the basic principles of safety. Nazi counteraction took place as early as July 1940 when the first group of prison staff were arested and transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. They were accused of helping the prisoners and involvement in the underground activities of one of the organizations that struggled for the country’s independence. Thereafter, the prison staff were more and more often put under surveillance, searched, and detained. In the winter of 1941/1942, the Nazi succeeded to introduce their agent, Józef Hammer, into the prison intelligence structures of the Armed Struggle Union. Hammer established co-operation with a group of the most ideologically motivated prison staff; through their activity, the Nazi intelligence gained access to materials possessed by underground organizations. As a result of this activity, 33 functionaries of the prison staff were arrested in March 1942; most of them were subsequently killed in concentration camps. In April, furher 9 officers were executed. The repressive measures towards Po1ish prison staff continued in 1943, when further arrests and executions took place, and in the early half of 1944 when Polish functionaries were dismissed (the Pawiak prison). The staff of prisons in Daniłowiczowska and Rakowiecka streets were much less affected by the Nazi repressions as there were practically no political prisoners in those two institutions. On 30 June 1942, the death penalty imposed on Józef Hammer in an underground trial was executed; it took the counter-espionage of the Home Army Headquarters a mere several weeks to clear his associates of the charge of intentional co-operation with the provocateur. Instead, it was manifested in an inquiry that the men had been completely devoted to the cause of struggle against the invaders and motivated by patriotic reasons. The underground movement’s battle against the Nazi for channels of com- munication with prisoners finally won, the period of consolidation of the prison intelligence headquarters started, especially in the Pawiak prison. As a result of actions undertaken by the Home Army Headquarters, the whole of this sphere was taken over by its counter- espionage division. By way of the sole exception, the Home Representation of Polish Ęmigr Government were permitted to organize their own network for communication with prisoners. Starting from mid-1942, the internal and external networks were reorganized and adjusted to new conditions resulted from Nazi policies, reflected first and foremost in intensified repressions of Polish prison staff. Heads of the Home Army Headquarters counter-espionage division compared the participation of that staff in anti- Nazi prison conspiracy to going to the front; they stated at the same time that the prison staff actually encountered a more dangerous situation. In their case, the enemy was the Nazi political police; they paid with their own life and health for any mistake, unguarded moment, or forgetfulness of dangers. If we take just the staff of the Pawiak prison into consideration, 62 of its members were arrested, l0 of them were executed , and a few only of the 45 confined to concentration camps managed to survive the gehenna.

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