U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Crime & Law Enforcement in Poland: On the Threshold of the 21st Century

NCJ Number
198182
Editor(s)
Andrzej Siemaszko
Date Published
2000
Length
171 pages
Annotation
This book is designed to familiarize readers with issues related to crime and the control of crime in Poland while highlighting the challenges facing Poland’s law enforcement and justice systems.
Abstract
Focusing on crime and the control of crime in Poland, this edited book discusses current challenges facing Poland’s law enforcement officials and justice system. Comprising three primary sections, the first section of this work, “Crime and Criminal Policy in Poland: A Look Back and Into the Future,” describes and analyzes major trends in crime and criminal policies in Poland in the 1990’s by referencing the previous era’s Communist rule. Various crimes, causes of crime, and law enforcement and criminal policies are discussed before hypothesizing about Poland’s future in regards to criminal activity. The second section of this book, “Facts and Figures,” presents police data on crime for 1999, prison population figures for 1999, graphs depicting major crime trends, and criminal policies in Poland. This section highlights crimes against health and life, crimes against property, crimes committed by foreigners, crime clean-up rates, decisions reached by prosecutors offices, numbers of suspects and convicted persons, the extent of retention on demand, the types of penalties handed down by Poland’s court system, trends in prison populations, gender and crime statistics, court workload schedules, International Crime Victim Survey results, and human and financial resources of the Polish criminal justice system. The third and last section of this work, entitled “Key Issues,” analyzes the primary problems facing present-day Poland in regards to crime, criminal activities, crime legislation, and crime prevention enforcement. Topics within this last section include “Promoting the Rule of Law and Strengthening the Criminal Justice System,” “Organized Crime,” “Drug-Related Offences,” “Economic Crime,” “Corruption,” “Internet-Related Crime,” “Juvenile Delinquency,” “Restorative Justice,” "Offences by Foreigners," “Crime Prevention,” and “Women in the Criminal Justice System.” In presenting the varied topics discussing crime and control in Poland, the editor aims to describe the legal frameworks currently in force in Poland, while presenting both the trends of the described phenomena and describing the extent of international cooperation towards controlling crime in present-day Poland.