Kształtowanie się przestępczości nieletnich w Polsce w latach 1951-1960 w świetle statystyki sądowej
Authors: Jerzy Jasiński  
Published: July 2024

In accordance with the criminal legislation in force in Poland, the term of juvenile delinquents comprises those persons who have committed a criminal offence before completing their seventeenth year of age. Such juveniles are prosecuted, as a rule, before special juvenile courts; they may be sentenced only to the application of various kinds of educational means, or be placed in a correctional institution. The subject of the present contribution is an analysis of the statistical materials connected with the juvenile persons found guilty within the ten years 1951— 1960. Such materials, making up the judicial statistics of juvenile delinquency, are formed by adding up the records from record cards filled by the law-courts - in every single case where educational and correctional means have been decreed with regard to a juvenile person. Consequently, the above statistics are in Poland, as, incidentally, in a great many other countries, those of findings of guilt, and not of the persons found guilty; every juvenile person is counted there as many times as the application of such means was decreed with regard to him. The data contained in such and similar statistics are known not to provide information about the actual dimensions of juvenile delinquency. A sporadic perpetration of certain minor offences, particularly theft, is extremely widespread among the totality of children and young people, and the perpetrators of such offences brought to light and prosecuted before the law-courts constitute but an insignificant percentage of the total number of juveniles who have committed this or that offence. Independently of the above-mentioned record cards, which furnish us with a great many data concerning the juveniles found guilty, there exist other sources of information concerning a certain even wider category of juveniles, namely those, against whom there was a suspicion, at some stage or other of the prosecution, that they were the perpetrators of offences: special court reports and police statistics. The data taken from judicial reports inform us that the juvenile courts dealt, in the years 1951 to 1960, with 25,000 to 38,000 cases of juvenile delinquents every year. Approximately 56 to 61 per cent, of those juveniles with regard to whom the application of educational and delinquents every year. consisted of persons correctional means was decreed (i. e. the juveniles found guilty), from 20 to discontinued in the 31 per cent. — juveniles, prosecution against whom was of preparatory proceedings, 6 to 11 per cent. — the juveniles acquitted, — those, whose cases were dealt with in some other ordinary law-court, course and 7 to 12 per cent. –(most frequently by making the case over to an because of the suspect person having completed 17 years of age). quite exceptionally appealed against by the Public Prosecutor, and very rarely by the accused themselves (in a mere cent, of the cases). In at least one-half of the total number of cases maintained in force by the courts way The decrees of juvenile courts are 3 to 5 per of appeal the decrees appealed against are of appeal. It was only in very few cases that the alteration of the decrees appealed against found their expression in the finding guilty of a juvenile acquitted, or else in acquitting one found guilty; mostly they consist in changing the educational means of the making accused over to a correctional institution. Between the number of juveniles, whose cases are annually dealt with by juvenile courts, and the number of juveniles suspected by the police of the perpetration of offences there were, particularly in the years 1951 — 1954, considerable differences, which showed that a large number of juveniles with whom the juvenile courts had to deal, were directed there not by the police. ? Within recent years such differences have become much smaller, so that at considered that the large majority of cases dealt with by the juvenile courts find their way there through the intermediary of the police Year                           Rate            Index number of juveniles found guilty           1951       15641        4.5                  100.0 1952       18022        5.3                  117.8   1953       21444        6.5                  144,4 1954       18495        6.0                  133,3 1955       16307        5.5                  122,2 1956       13474        4.6                  102,2 1957       15019        4.9                  108,9 1958       16821        5.1                  113,3 1959       19730        5.6                  124,4      1960       20520        5.4                  120,0     In spite of the appearance, within the ten-year period in question, of certain variations in the frequency of juveniles being found guilty, a detailed analysis of the data provided by both judicial and police statistics has demonstrated that there were no foundations for an assumption that such variations were connected with any actual increase or decrease in juvenile delinquency. The yearly frequency of juveniles being found guilty (i. e. of persons between the ages of ten and sixteen) was expressed, throughout the 1951 — 1960 period, by an average rate equal to 5.3.   In accordance with the latest data available to us from the pre-war period, namely from 1937, the number of juveniles found guilty that year amounted to 29384, while the frequency of their findings of guilt was only slightly higher than the average rate for the years 1951 — 1960; the corresponding rate amounted to 5.5. If the frequency of juveniles being found guilty were to remain, within the nearest future, on the same level as in the years 1959 — 1960 (when the rate amounted to about 5.5), then — in connection with the ever more numerous age-groups, composed of children born after the war, and now reaching the “ juvenile” age groups — the probable number of juveniles found guilty would amount to about 26320 in 1965, consequently by some 28 per cent, more than in 1960. In order to evaluate properly the amount of the findings of guilt of larger groups of juveniles over longer periods of time, the rates which inform us about the above frequency within one year only, are of no use. Therefore in order to achieve this aim we must look for other measurements of the frequency of findings of guilt. It appears particularly tempting to take for such a measurement the percentage of persons who had been found guilty of offences committed while they were still juveniles, as compared with the total number of those born within the year in question. If the above percentage be calculated with regard to the number of persons born within one calendar year at the moment when they completed seventeen years of age, that measurement will inform us, what part of the group of persons who have just become adults consists of those who had been found guilty as juvenile delinquents.    The appropriate calculations have been made for persons born in the years 1941 to 1944, i. e. for persons who are from nineteen to twenty-two years old in 1963. At the moment when they were just seventeen, from 3.5 to 3.8 per cent, of their number consisted of persons found guilty for offences committed while they were juveniles. As for boys alone, the above-mentioned percentages were of the size of from 6.3 to 6.8 per cent., which means that, approximately, every fifteenth young man born in the years 1941 to 1944 was previously found guilty of offences committed during the period when he was still a juvenile. One of the problems which a considerable deal of attention has been devoted to in the present contribution are the local differences between the degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty. Two aspects of the problem were disscussed: that of the differences in the size of the rates calculated for the several voyevodships, and for town and country respectively.   Even though Poland is divided into twenty-two large administrative units, called voyevodships, yet in the present contribution their number was assumed to be only seventeen; this was done by joining the five largest cities, having the status of a separate voyevodship, with the surrounding voyevodships (thus e. g. Warsaw and the voyevodship of Warsaw, Poznan and the voyevodship of Poznań, etc., have been treated as one single voyevodship). In the size of the rates, therefore, calculated on the basis of the number of the juveniles found guilty in the several voyevodships, there appeared considerable differences, which, however, proved to be smaller towards the end of the ten-year period under investigation, than they had been at its beginning. When, within each year, the voyevodships were placed in a sequence corresponding to that of the size of the coefficient of juvenile delinquency, it appeared that a relatively higher degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty were always characteristic of some voyevodships, while others showed a relatively lower degree of frequency (W = 0.87)[1]. It also appeared that there existed a correlation between the degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty in various voyevodships and the degree of frequency of the convictions of young persons between the ages of seventeen and twenty (in 1955: % = 0.53; in 1957: t = 0.51)[2]; on the other hand, correlation with the intensity of adult convictions looked rather doubtful. Generally speaking, a relatively higher degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty was characteristic of the western and north-western voyevodships, while in the remaining areas of the country it was distinctly lower. Of course, the question arises of how to explain the above differences in the size of the rates. An attempt was made to provide an answer, by establishing whether the voyevodships with a high degree of frequency of findings of guilt were also those where such phenomena, thought to affect the increase or decrease of juvenile delinquency, appeared. For this purpose a number of demographic data of various kinds have been made use of, viz. those showing the characteristic features of , above all the dimensions and intensity of population migrations, the process of urbanization and industrialization. The following results have been obtained.[3] The voyevodships which were characterized by the highest degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty were, as a rule, the very same voyevodships, in which the population migrations caused by the Second World War and by its consequences have attained the most considerable dimensions, as well as those, in which in the years 1952 to 1957 there was recorded the largest population increase and its smallest decrease connected with the voyevodship— to — voyevodship migrations. These were, moreover, the following voyevodships: those where a considerable part of the population drew their principal livelihood from sources other than agriculture; those where the bulk of the population consisted of town->dwellers, and finally those, where the urbanization process during the years 1950 to 1960, was most rapid as compared with the 1950 level. Marked differences have been observed in the frequency of juveniles being found guilty as between town and country. In the towns it was approximately three times higher than in the country (the corresponding rates, in 1960, amounted to 8.4 and 3.0, respectively). Consequently, one in every one hundred and nineteen juveniles was found guilty in towns, as compared with one in every three hundred and thirty three in the country. The lack of appropriately detailed demographic data has made impossible a more precise analysis of the frequency of juveniles being found guilty as between towns of various sizes. All we know is that, in 1960, the rate equal to 9.7 for the five largest cities, each of which has over 400,000 inhabitants, was higher than that in the -remaining towns (8.1). Judging from the 1960 data, in the voyevodships where the intensity of juvenile convictions was relatively high in the towns, it also proved to be relatively high in the country (T = 0.56). The dimensions of the intensity of juvenile convictions in the country seem to be somewhat connected with the degree of “ urbanization” of the countryside: viz. in those voyevodships, in which the frequency of findings of guilt in the country was higher than that in others, the percentage of persons, among the rural population, who drew their livelihood from trades other than agriculture being also higher (T = 0,29). Among the total number of juveniles found guilty, the enormous majority (approximately 90 per cent.) consisted of boys, whereas their percentage increased, from 89 per cent, in 1951 to 93 per cent, in 1960. Similarly, among the young people and young adults between seventeen and twenty years of age, the share of men increased within the same period. As a result of this, while in 1951 the rate for boys (7.8) was seven times higher than that for girls (1.1), by 1960 it was already as much as twelve times higher (the corresponding rates then amounted to 9.9 and 0.8 respectively). The frequency of boys being found guilty was expressed by a mean rate amounting to 9.7, while that for girls was 1.0; in the period under investigation, therefore on an average one boy in one hundred and Tyree was found guilty, and one girl in a thousand, both of them within the age groups of from ten to sixteen years of age. Relative differences in the frequency of juveniles being found guilty which appeared as between the several voyevodships exhibited marked features of constancy, for boys (W = 0.85), as well as for girls (W = 0.82). It has also turned out that for both boys and girls, there existed a correlationbetween the frequency of their being found guilty in the several voyevodships, and the degree of frequency, in the voyevodships in question, of the above social phenomena which strongly affect juvenile delinquency. In the years 1959 and 1960 the frequency of boys being found guilty was more than ten times higher than that of girls, bath for town-dwellers and for village-dwellers. The number of juveniles found guilty gradually increases as we pass from the junior to the senior age groups. Among the total number of juveniles found guilty there were three to four times less ten-year-olds than there were fourteen-, fifteen-, or sixteen-year-olds. The average degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty within the several age groups was as follows within the period under investigation (in rates per 1000 persons in the corresponding age groups): 10-year-olds   2.4 11-year-olds   3.5  12-year-olds  4.8 13-year-olds  6.3 14-year-olds  7.1 15-year-olds  7.7 16-year-olds  6.6     The fact that the rate obtained for 16-year-olds is lower than that for 15-year-olds results from the author’s inability (because of the lack of the appropriate data) to take into consideration to a sufficient extent approximately twenty to thirty per cent, of the 16-year-olds, namely those who were convicted by ordinary law-courts after having completed their seventeenth year of age, and consequently when they were already adults.   Within the 1951 through 1960 period the average age of the juveniles found guilty in the successive years underwent changes connected, to some extent at least, with the total number of juveniles in the several year-groups. While in 1951 the average age of the juveniles found guilty was 14.0 years, by 1955— 1957 it had reached 14,2 years and subsequently it gradually dropped to 13.8 years in 1960. The above observation has proved to be very important: for, indeed, it was the changes in the juveniles’ age that made it possible for us to explain a number of discrepancies found to occur in the information concerning the juveniles found guilty in various years of the period under investigation.   The average concentration of conviction rates for boys and girls, as well as the quotient of their respective numbers are as follows in the period under investigation for the several age-groups within a year:                          Boys     Girls         for 100 boys found guilty there                                                         were girls found guilty   10-year-old      4.3      0.3            6,8 11-year-old      6. 5      0.4           6.6    12-year-old      8.9      0.6.           7.0       13-year-old     11.6     0.9           7.2 14-year-old     12. 9.  1.2            9.4 15-year-old      13.5   1.9           13.9 16-year-old.     11.2   2.0           17.2 The above remarks concerning the value of the rates for 16-year-olds, as well as the changes in the average ages of those found guilty, naturally also apply both to boys and to girls. In every year of the 1951 to 1960 period the girls found guilty were, on average, older than the boys found guilty; the differences between their average ages have proved to be statistically significant[4]. The girls found guilty within the 1959 to 1960 period were also significantly older while than the boys found guilty in the same years, only for town-dwellers, the difference was not significant for village-dwellers. It has also been established that the boys found guilty within the same years and living in towns were significantly younger than those living in the country, while no such differences have been found to occur in the case of girls. The frequency of findings of guilt of the oldest age-groups of juvenile boys from the towns has assumed serious proportions:, in 1959 and 1960 from 2.0 per cent, to 2.7 per cent, of the total number of town-dwelling 14 to 16-year-old boys were annually found guilty. Among the 20,520 juveniies found guilty in 1960 — 15,927 (77.6 per cent.) had both parents living, 3,650 (17.8 per cent.) had only a mother, 720 (3.5 per cent.) had only a father, while a mere 223 (1.1 per cent.) were orphans. In the years 1953 to 1956 the family situation of the juveniles found guilty assumed even less favourable proportions: a bare two-thirds of their number had both parents living, half-orphans constituted about thirty per cent., while complete orphans from 3 to 4 per cent.   The percentage of juveniles who were actually under the guardianship of both parents was, in every single year, lower by several per cent, than the percentage of those who had both parents alive. Approximately one in every four or five juveniles found guilty was under the guardianship of a solitary mother (either widowed or else deserted by her husband).   On the basis of judicial statistics alone it is impossible to form a proper opinion of what social strata the juveniles found guilty were recruited from. Only indirect and but vaguely approximate information concerning that may be found in the data on the kind of occupation of the parents or guardians of the juvenile in question; for the years 1953 to 1960 they presented the following picture: juveniles whose parents (guardians) were manual workers amounted to from 60 to 62 per cent., the children of white-collar workers — from 9 to 10 per cent., farmers (the enormous majority of them had farms of their own) — from 19 to 22 per cent., artisans working in their own workshops or small traders — from 1 to 2 per cent.; the remaining few per cent, of juveniles consisted of those, whose parents or guardians remained without any permanent occupation, or of juveniles who had neither parents nor guardians. Among the juveniles found guilty every year from 81 to 88 per cent, committed offences against property (as a rule, of theft); most them had committed crimes against the property of private citizens, while the remaining ones — against social property. Juveniles prosecuted for crimes against life and health accounted for from 3 to 6 per cent.., for sexual offences — for from 0.7 to 1.4 per cent., for forgery of documents — for from 0.5 to 2.1 per cent., while a few per cent, were found guilty every year of various other kinds of criminal offences. The perpetrators of serious crimes (such as homicide, manslaughter, serious bodily damage, robbery, rape, intimacy with minors below fifteen years of age) accounted for a mere few per cent, of the total number of the juveniles found guilty. Between the structure of the delinquency of the town-dwelling and that of the village-dwelling juveniles, as well as between that of boys and girls, certain minor differences were recorded, which – as proved by test x2 — were statistically significant. Age proved to be a factor which seriously influenced the structure of juvenile delinquency, as we move from the younger to the older age-groups, their criminality becoming more and more differentiated. Thus, e.g. in 1960 those prosecuted for the perpetration of offences against property accounted for 92 per cent, of the 10-year-olds found guilty, while only for 76 per cent, of the 16-year-olds; in the case of those prosecuted for offences against life and health the appropriate figures were 3 per cent, and 11 per cent, respectively, in sexual offences: 0.2 in document forgery: 0.1 per cent, and 1.4 per cent. Similarly the kinds of theft, the offence most frequently committed by juveniles, assumed various aspects, in accordance with their perpetrators. It appeared that certain changes in the structure of juvenile delinquency, which came to light in the course of the 1955 to 1960 period, were almost exclusively connected with the decrease in the average age of the juveniles found guilty during those years. One of the age pieces of information concerning the offence for which a juvenile was prosecuted before the courts, consists of the data recorded on the registration card, whether he or she has committed his or her offence individually or else in co-operation with other persons. Even though the entries on the registration card do not contain any information as to the character of the bond which united the juvenile to the persons who have perpetrated offences together with him, yet it could be assumed — on the basis of the results of special research on that problem — that, in every single case those found guilty of offences committed together with at least two fellow-perpetrators, were members of gangs of juvenile delinquents.                    The juveniles prosecuted for offences committed in a group (i.e. along with two or more fellow-perpetrators) constituted a considerable percentage of those annually found guilty (from 34 to 39 per cent.), a percentage only slightly lower than that of juveniles prosecuted for offences individually (from 38 to 43 per cent.). As could be surmised, the percentage of juveniles who committed offences on committed ones group was actually even higher in proportion to the total number of juveniles found guilty; for, indeed as a many of such juveniles were recorded in judicial statistics among the accused found guilty of the commission of offences perpetrated together with one fellow-perpetrator.   The percentage of juveniles who co-operated with adults (who were, as young adults, between seventeen and twenty years of age) in no single year of the period under investigation exceeded 9 per cent, of the total number of juveniles found guilty of committing offences together with other persons. The considerable importance which is ascribed, in the etiology of juvenile delinquency, to groups, has encouraged the author to check the question of whether, in the voyevodships with a relatively high frequency of juveniles being found guilty, those found guilty of the commitment of crimes perpetrated in a group were also relatively more numerous. That assumption was proved to be well-founded: for the data from the successive years of the 1957 to 1960 period the values of t obtained remained within years the range of from 0.50 to 0.60.   High percentages of juveniles found guilty of offences committed in a group (from 45 to 55 per cent.) among the total number of juveniles found guilty in the voyevodship in question, as well as low percentages (from 25 to 30 per cent.) were recorded in approximately the same voyevodships, in the 1957 to 1960 (W = 0.74).   Both the above observations also apply to boys, while in the case of girls, we lack foundations for considering that the territorial distribution of the girls who had committed offences in a group was connected with the degree of frequency of their being found guilty.   Neither has the assumption found its confirmation that there could exist a connection between the degree of frequency of juveniles being found guilty and the frequency of adult persons appearing in groups of juveniles. Cases of committing offences in a group were considerably more frequent for boys (from 36 to 41 per cent.) than girls (from 9 to 12 per cent.); approximately three-fourths of the girls found guilty were prosecuted for offences committed individually, while for boys the corresponding figure was only slightly above one-third. A marked dependence has been found to exist between the sex of a juvenile and the fact of his or her committing offences individually or else in groups. The juveniles who committed offences in groups have proved to be than those who committed them individually; this significantly younger observation holds for both boys and girls. Significant differences have been found to exist between the structure of the delinquency of the juveniles who acted as a group, and those who committed offences individually; these found their expression, foremost, in the juveniles who belonged to gangs of juvenile offenders frequently committing offences against property. On the basis of the materials contained in the judicial statistics only formal recidivism could be stated to exist, consequently it was possible to find out how many (and what kind of) juveniles found guilty e.g. within any given calendar year had already been found guilty before. Even such data, however, are far from complete; this is connected, in particular, with certain peculiarities of Polish criminal procedure, as of the recording of the findings of guilt of juveniles in judicial statis- first and more well as with the scope tics. Some of the more important among the data mentioned above are as follows: The percentages of recidivists among the juveniles found guilty within every single year of the 1953 to 1960 period were found within the range of from 12 per cent, to 18 per cent. About four-fifths of the recidivists consisted of juveniles who had only 1 In 1956 the compulsory school attendance (comprising seven classes of the elementary school) was extended to sixteen years of age, and in 1961 even to one appearance in court in the past; there were less than one hundred juveniles yearly who had previously been found guilty three times, and merely from fifteen to thirty who had been found guilty four or more times. An analysis of the local differences between the percentages of recidivists among the total number of juveniles in the several voyevodships has led to the conclusion that there did not exist any correlation between the degree of frequency of findings of guilt and the formal recidivism of juveniles. Juvenile recidivists were considerably more numerous among those found guilty who lived in cities and towns (from 14 per cent, to 23 per cent.) than among those who lived in the country (from 6 per cent, to 10 per cent.), considerably more numerous among boys (from 12 per cent, to 19 per cent.) than among girls (from 5 per cent, to 10 per cent.), among older offenders than among younger ones, among orphans and half-orphans than among those juveniles who were under the guardianship of both parents.   The structure of the delinquency of juvenile recidivists differed signifi- cantly from the structure of the delinquency of those juveniles who were prosecuted for the first time; in particular, juvenile recidivists were more frequently prosecuted for offences against property than were non-recidivists. Among those data of the judicial statistics of juvenile delinquency which have not been discussed in the present contribution, particularly noteworthy is the information concerning the amount of school education received by the juveniles found guilty. Even though, in the course of the period under investigation, the situation in so far as their training was concerned underwent a considerable improvement, it is still most unfavourable in various respects.    In the years 1954 to 1958 barely from 61 to 65 per cent, of the total number of juveniles found guilty attended school (by 1960 the percentage had increased to 81); in the same years from 20 to 25 per cent, of the total number of juveniles found guilty neither attended school nor worked (in 1960 — 13 per cent.). The percentage of those not attending school at an age of below 14 years (i.e. those still within the school-attending age) 1[5] was by several per cent, higher among the juveniles found guilty in all age groups than it was among all the children in Poland (in whose case it did not exceed 1 or 2 per cent.).   The belatedness in school curriculum of the juveniles found guilty was enormous and considerably exceeded the belatedness to be met with among the total number of school children in Poland.   Among the latter there were — depending on the class attended — from two-thirds to nine-tenths of the total number of pupils who had the age proper for the class in question, while among the juveniles found guilty who attended school there were (in the majority of the classes attended) considerably below one-half such pupils. The percentages of juveniles belated by three or more years in their school curriculum were many times higher among the juveniles found guilty than they were among the total number of school children.   The education level of those juveniles who had abandoned learning and were found guilty in the 1954 through 1960 demonstrated that barely from 36 per cent, to 46 per cent, of them finished the seven-class obligatory elementary education.   21. The materials contained in judicial statistics also make possible an analysis of the law-courts’ policy in the field of decreeing educational and correctional means, as well as providing some information on the application of the means mentioned above. The presentation of the results of such an analysis, however, would require a separate publication.   [1] This dependence was fixed by making use of Kendall’s coefficient of concordance W. (Cf. M. C. Kendall: Rank Correlation Methods, London 1955). In this case, as well as in all the others, the values of statistical tests have been provided, when the hypothesis of the independence of the variables investigated could be rejected at least at a level of significance of 0.05. [2] For the purpose of establishing the relation between the two rankings use was made of Kendall’s rank correlation coefficient %. (Cf: M.G. Kendall: Rank Correlation Methods, London 1955). [3] As a measurement of the correlation between the frequency of juveniles being found guilty and the several demographic variables investigated the rank correlation coefficient, was accepted. [4] Cf. H. Cramer: Mathematical Methods of Statistics (Polish translation, Warszawa 1958). [5] In 1956 the compulsory school attendance (comprising seven classes of the elementary school) was extended to sixteen years of age, and in 1961 even to 18 years, comprising eight classes of the elementary school.