Główne kierunki polityki karnej realizowanej przez kolegia do spraw wykroczeń w latach 1972–1989
Authors: Jerzy Szumski  
Published: July 2024

The paper characterizes the evolution of penal policy with respect to per peetrators of transgressions, pursued in Poland by elected agencies attacbed to the state administration and called “transgression boards”. In the years 1972–1989, their decisions were supervised by the Minister of Internal Affairs. Most of the discussion, based on statistical materials, concerns changes in the structure and dynamics of penal measures applied by the boards. The measures have been defined as all legal reactions applicable upon the finding the perpetrator’s guilt. The present paper does not deal with all of those measures, though: for lack of statistical data, tukets imposed by the penal prosecution agencies and the possible reactions on part of those agencies if they renounce moving the case to the board for punishment according to the principle of expediency of prosecution could not be discussed. Penal policy has been characterized against the background of amendments introduced in the period under analysis and of instructions issued by the Minister of Internal Affairs that shape the boards’ decisions. After 1982, such instructions usually aimed at aggravating repression. The statutory catalogue of penal measures contained in the transgressions code is relatively extensive. The most severe measure is detention which amounts to deprivation of liberty for up to 3 months. As stated in the code, it should be applied in exceptional cases only. In the first decade of validity of the code, detention was imposed in l–l.5 % of all decisions which meant the deprivation of liberty of 9,00–10,000 persons. It is therefore doubtful whether detention was indeed treated as an exceptional measure by practicians. In the next years, it was imposed much less often. The penalty of suspended detention played any role in the practice of transgression boards. As shown by studies, those who applied law treated suspended detention as a separate penal measure to replace other measures not involving deprivation of liberty rather than a way of limiting the use of immediaste detention. Also disappointed were the expectations related to another new measure, formally more severe than fine, that is limitation of liberty which was to “educate through work”. According to the legislators’ assumptions, that penalty was to be the main alternative to detention; in practice, it was imposed rather often (about 5% of all measures applied) but served mainly as a substitute for fine. The basic measure applied to perpetrators of transgressions was fine, imposed on 90% of cases of those punished by the boards. According to provisions of the Transgressions Code, though, a substitute penalty of detention can be imposed in the case of justified doubts as to the possibility of execution of fine. For this reason, it was found advisable in the present analysis to treat this form of fine as a measure different in quality from fine imposed without a substitute penalty which could in no case lead to imprisonment. Also research findings encouraged the treatment of these two kinds of fine as separate penal measures: the substitute penalty was treated in practice as a specific method of aggravating repression, and imposed in defiance with provisions of the Code. Owing to this approach it could be evidenced that the proportion of fines combined with the threat of deprivation of liberty (another measures designed as exceptional) went up rapidly in mid-1910s to become stabilized at about 20% of all decisions of the transgression boards. The abuse of that measure, also designed as exceptional, was accompanied mainly by less frequent fines without a substitute penalty. At the same time, the proportion of the two most lenient measures, that is admonition and renouncement of inflicting punishment, went down regularly and amounted to a mere 2% of decisions despite the broad applications of those measures contained in the Code. This reflects the practicians’ tendency to use the aggravating legal solutions much more often than those which mitigate penalty; this led to increased repressiveness of penal policy. Beside the above-mentioned reactions, the Transgressions Code provides for a number of measures called additional penalties which are to accompany the principal ones. They can also be applied as self-standing measures in specific situations. Yet the agencies that apply law never availed themselves of this latter possibility. Instead, additional penalties were lavishly imposed (particularly the witholrawal it driving licence and the penalty of making the sentence publicly known) which led to accumulation of repressions suffered by the punished person. This is why the serious growth in the number of additional penalties, after the legal changes introduced in mid-l980s and instructions issued by the Minister of Internal Affairs in particular, was still another proof of the aggravation of penal policy with respect to perpertrators of transgressions. Characteristically, the Polish Transgressions Code combines the application of some of the non-custodical measures with the threat of deprivation of liberty in the case of failure in the execution of those measures. This concerns the above-mentioned fine but also, in definite conditions, the limitation of liberty and suspended detention. In practice, the threat of imprisonment was used very often, the total proportion of the three above measures becoming stabilized, after an initial growth, at about 20–25% of decisions which mainly resulted from excessive imposition of fines with a substitute penalty of detention. Most importantly, though, that threat was realized with respect to every fifth or sixth person in that group. As a result, the average of 20–25 thousand persons a year were imprisoned despite the fact that a measure not involving deprivation of liberty had originally been applied to them. A paradoxical situation arose where persons sentenced to the principal penalty of detention constituted a small percentage of those imprisoned by force of decisions of the transgression boards, while most served a substitute penalty due to a failure in the execution of the previously applied non-custodial measure. Still another expression of the growing repressiveness of penal policy was the greater and greater involved in the most frequently imposed penalty of fines in both of its forms: due to amendments of the Transgressions Code, the amound of fine went up a quicker pace than the average wages in socialized economy during most of the 1980s. A statutory solution concerning transgression that was most vehemently critized by the doctrine was the most limited judicial supervision over decisions of the transgression boards. The appel instance were boards of the second instance; only decisions imposing detention and limitation of liberty could be appealed against to the court. Thus judicial supervision concerned neither the substitute penalties which involved deprivation of liberty nor the most acute ban on driving motor vehicles. Meanwhile as shown by experimental findings, 6–15% of persons punished by the boards were acquitted by the court to which they complained, and a non-isolation measure was substituted for deprivation of liberty in over one-third of the cases. This shows that courts saw decisions of the boards not only as essentially defective but also as excessively repressive. This latter conclusion is rather symptomatic the fact considered that penal policy pursued by courts with respect to offenders was sewere, too. What has also to be stressed when characterizing the decisions in cases of transgressions is the frequent use of the statutory possibility of deciding in expedited proceedings and proceedings by writ of payment. From the viewpoint of rational penal policy, that tendency deserves to be criticized as protection of the defendant’s basic processual guaranties suffers statutory limitation in those modes of procedure, and the speed and simplification of proceedings affect the individualization of punishment. Also of importance was the fact that the frequent decisions in expedited proceedings served as a specific form of aggravation of represion since – as shown by research findings – the penalties imposed in that mode were more severe than in the ordinary proceedings. Analysis of the evolution of decisions of the transgression boards has led to the conclusion that throughout the period under analysis, penal policy was regularly aggravated which was largely influenced by punitive instructions of the Minister of Internal Affairs. The only periods of mitigation of penalties were the years 1981 and 1989: this resulted mainly from social conflicts and public opinion pressure on reduction of repressiveness of the penal system. For this reason, the 1989 amendment of the Transgression Code, forced by systemic changes, which deprived the Minister of Internal Affairs of his original control over decisions of the transgression boards and submitted all of those decisions to judical review brings the hope for liberalization and rationalization of penal policy in cases of transgressions.