Granice nieletniości w polskim prawie karnym
Authors: Grażyna Rdzanek-Piwowar  
Published: July 2024

The entering into force on 13 May l983 of the Act on the treatment of juveniles of 26 October 1982 ended the period of over fifty years of validity of provisions of the penal code of 1932 (Chapter XI) and code of criminal procedure of 1928 (Chapter II of Book XI) which regulated the principles of responsibility of juvenile perpetrators of “acts prohibited under penalty”. Authors of the pre-war legislation, at the first stage of its preparation in particular, intended to make it specific and educational in nature through omission in the treatment of juveniles of the elements of responsibility and punishment. The finally adopted solution was a compromise: responsibility of juveniles have been related to age, discernment, and type of measures applied. With respect to undiscerning juvenile perpetrators of acts prohibited under penalty under the age of 13, and also to those aged 13–17, only educational  measures could be applied (admonition; supervision by the parents, former guardians, or a probation officer; placement in an educational institution) Juveniles aged 13–17 who discerned the meaning of their act were to be placed in a correction al institution; educational measures were to be applied in their cases if the circumstances, the juvenile’s personality or his living conditions made such placement inexpedient. Thus the legislation concerning juveniles remained part of the system of penal law in spite of the special features it started to acquire. That was also the direction, after the war in particular, of interpretation of the legal provisions. As a result, the measures applied to juveniles were given an explicitly educational character. This was done through the relation of those imeasures  to the perpetrator’s personality and not to the act, and through abolition of the institution of discernment. Since discernment. Since mid–1950s, the juvenile courts followed instructions which  changed the legal status of a juvenile. The age limit of penal responsibility of juveniles was set initially at ten and then at 13 years; younger children were not to be brought before the courts unless the case concerned guardianship. Many changes in the post-war provisions were also introduced by means of statutes. They concerned organization and functioning of the system of treatment of juveniles  (strengthening of the role of judge, introduction of the so-called family courts, increased number of probation officers). This way, a socially desirable continuation of the legal tradition was secured by means of reforms which were evolutionary and dictated by the current needs, and without liquidation of the existing structures, tested in the practice of many decades. The new statute adopted many of those changes more or less directly. Setting the upper age limit of juveniles, the post-war penal code of 1969 preserved the principle according to which criminal responsibility is conditioned upon the offender’s age of at least 17 (Art. 9). At the same time, though, Art. 9 made it possible to apply to offenders aged 17 the measures normally designed for juveniles, and to sentence juveniles aged 16 guilty of the most serious crimes to the ordinary but extraordinarily mitigated penalties. The final shape of the Act on the treatment of juveniles of 26 October 1982 was influenced both by the intent to preserve the developed and tested solutions, and by the discussion that preceded its introduction when optional conceptions of the treatment of juveniles were submitted. The following stages of the thirty-two years’ period of legislative works can be distinguished: – the years 1950–1956; long works on a new penal code were in progress and attempts were made at aggravating the responsibility of juveniles through the introduction of penalties (according to a draft of 1950, penalties were to be imposed on juveniles starting from the age of 12); – the years 1956–1960; in 1956, it was decided to work on a separate statute on juvenil and not within the preparation of a new penal code; a special team of the Codification Commission failed to agree upon a draft of the statute; – the years 1961–65;  no legislative works were formally in progres but two different conceptions were discussed: of inclusion of prevention in the act (which would thus apply to the socially maladjusted juveniles as well) and of introduction of social courts; – the years 1966–1971; attempts were made at partly realizing those conceptions in a succession of draft statutes; – the years 1972–76; the works were conducted by the Ministry of Education which tried to include the problems of prevention of juvenile delinquency and treatment of juveniles in a broader statute called the young generation code; – the years 1977–82 when the works on a statute were again taken over by the Ministry of Justice and a succession of versions of the draft were prepared. The Act of 26 October 1982 on the treatment of juveniles changed the scope of the notion of “juvenile”. According to the statutory definition, juveniles are: 1) persons with respect to whom provisions of  the act apply in the sphere of prevention and control of demoralization; the upper age limit in this category is 18 years, and the lower limit is not specified; 2) persons with respect to whom provisions of the statute apply in the sphere of proceedings in cases of punishable acts; such proceedings can be instituted towards persons who have been aged over 13 but under 17 while committing a punishable act; 3) persons with respect to whom provisions of the statute apply in connection with the carrying out of educational or corrective measures; the upper age limit of this category is 21 years. Tlerefore, the statute goes beyond the sphere traditionally reserved for penal law. The aim at making the statute educational in nature is manifested above all by the principle that the commission by a juvenile of a punishable act is not the only condition of the institution of proceedings in the case of that juvenile. The statute sanctions the need for intervention in the early stage of social maladjustment not only in cases where that maladjustment manifests itself in a punishable act. If a juvenile does commit an act of this  kind, his offence is not examined in the categories of guilt and responsibility. This is manifested by the abolition of the criteria of discernment, by the term “punishable act” used to designate an  offence committed by a juvenile, and by the absence of the term “responsibility of juveniles” in the name and provisions of the statute discussed. The statute bases on the assumption of education; its basic notion is demoralization. In its first meaning in which it has been used by the legislator, “demoralization'” is treated as a prerequisite of initiation of proceedings. Were the educational assumptions adopted to the full, commission of a punishable act could and should be treated as one of the symptoms of demoralization, not different in any way from the other symptoms. Assumed in the statute, however, is a special treatment of the juveniles with respecr to whom provisions of the statute apply in the sphere of prevention of demoralization, and in the sphere of control of demoralization. With respect to the latter, provisions of  the statute on  proceedings in cases of punishable acts apply, and with respect to the former – provisions on civil proceedings. The differentiation introduced by the statute (which is not consistent for that matter) results from a specific compromise: a combination of the ideas of prevention and  education with the approach typical of penal law where the legal response is conditioned upon the gravity of the act.  A conflict of the tendencies which clash nowadays all over the world – to preserve the model of treatment of juveniles within the institutions of penal law on the one hand, and to give the statute an educational character on the other  hand – can be noticed in other provisions of the statute discussed as well. In the classical system, the age limits of juveniles were clear and had just as clearly defined functions – they marked out the age of the so-called conditional criminal responsibility, provided discernment could be ascertained. Today, the upper limit of the age of juveniles is usually also the limit of full criminal responsibility, although many legislations provide for an exceptional possibility of imposition of penalties upon the oldest juveniles who commit a crime or a serious offence. The problem of the lower limit is more entangled , the modern legislations adopting several age limits here which results usually from the need to determine different scopes of intervention of the legal provisions in the sphere of juvenile law. Therefore, what still remains an important issue  is for the juvenile law to define an age limit below which provisions of penal law never apply, not even as auxiliaries.