Poland: National Regulations in the Shadow of the Common Past – Criminal Law

Criminal law regulations in each country are among the most delicate and most important legal acts
for the functioning of the society. Criminal liability determined in the course of criminal proceedings
is the most controversial type of legal liability because unlike other types, it allows, in the majesty
of the law, for the deepest type of interference with the status of a free individual, specifically, the
status of their rights. Additionally, the positive result of criminal proceedings, namely the statement
that someone did indeed commit a crime, has very serious consequences. This is because in general,
criminal law is public law, wherein this interference with individuals’ rights and freedoms is most
apparent. Therefore, on the one hand, in the area of criminal law, there must be a specific balance
between the necessity to interfere with the rights of an individual by a public authority and the securing
of these rights against possible abuses of this authority. On the other hand, the area of criminal
law is particularly susceptible to a wide variety of historical events as well as political, social, and
economic influences. This primarily regards time in the sense of historical events, the specificity of
the period, or simply the attitude of public authorities toward an individual in society. In this line of
thought, analyses showing the general characteristics of each criminal law system, in this case, the
system functioning in Poland, are recent and highly interesting.

KEYWORDS: Poland, penal system, criminal law, criminal proceedings, the evolution of criminal law in Poland