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Can we seriously analyse penal policy trends in the post-communist states if we have no idea on the penal legislation in these countries, on trends in crime combat and prevention or the current shape of the penal policy, including in particular penal code reforms that are being developed or implemented? We would naturally say no. The author, however, attempts to prove that such an analysis is possible provided one has access to relevant statistical data. The data are contained mainly in three publications: European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, Penological Information Bulletin and Atlas przestępczości w Polsce [Overview of Crime in Poland]. For the purposes of this paper, the data were significantly modified not to include some of the post-communist states. For various reasons, mainly due to the data credibility and completeness, the author focussed only on ten such states, i.e. Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary. Some comparisons also include Bulgaria. Firstly, an analysis of the data shows that the common characteristics of the post-communist states under discussion are their high crime levels, both in terms of dynamics and prevalence. An exceptionally high level of crime risk is also displayed in the victimological research results. Secondly, a comparison of crime reporting levels clearly shows that the crime level in our region is actually much higher than police statistics might suggest. This is also confirmed by the results of nationwide Polish research held every four years within the International Crime Survey. We usually are one of the last countries in terms of crime reporting levels. It seems that people in our region are generally quite reluctant to report crime (due to our mistrust in police effectiveness), which makes our official crime statistics extremely unreliable. Therefore, while victimological research in the Western European countries may be treated as an interesting alternative to police statistics (and we actually could do without the latter), in our region, such research is a must. Thirdly, due to the extremely unreliable police statistics, it is essential to initiate victimological research in the countries of our region, and ideally to include them in the International Crime Survey. Without reliable victimological studies, we will have to rely on the police data that sometimes seem to be a tactless joke. The author's analysis, although not aimed at establishing any general rules, but rather at clearly describing the facts, naturally brings some obvious conclusions. The first conclusion is that all the former Soviet bloc countries were characterised by high crime levels at the turn of the 21st century. And the times are not conducive to softening penal repressions, which makes it obvious that most states under discussion continued their rather harsh penal policy compared to the Western countries. Poland was an interesting exception with its new and extremely liberal penal legislation having been introduced in the period of an extremely sharp crime growth. However, the author underlines that these developments had fortunately little influence on the judicial practice, all the more so since the main legislative and judicial changes to ease penal repressions had been introduced earlier. In other words, already before 1997 when the new penal codification was adopted, we had reached a dead end in crime policy liberalisation and there was no space left for more such changes for fear of mass protests and riots. The fact that the new and much more liberal penal code did not bring significant changes in the judicial practice proves the advantage of the judicial opinion over penal code solutions. This means and is clearly confirmed in the Polish experience that the form of penal legislation is much less important (though not unimportant) than specific judicial practice. All the states under analysis still show a disastrous structure of the length of unsuspended prison sentences. On the one hand, the shortest terms (up to one year, or even six months) are used too rarely, and on the other, too seldom are also the relatively long terms of ten and more years of prison. That makes sentence diversification seem insufficient. In all the states under discussion, the dominating group of imprisonment sentences are those from one to three years, which is inefficient from the criminology perspective, quite costly, and leads to the overpopulation of prisons. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that all these countries have such high imprisonment rates per 100,000 inhabitants.

The subject of the article is an analysis of the non-custodial sentencje known in Poland as curtailment of liberty (and thus excluding fines) as an important instrument of penal policy in the 1970-1998, the main focus being on two strands or this policy–legislative policy and penal policy–to the exclusion of the latter’s administrative aspects. In the light of the guiding principles of the 1969 Criminal Code non-custodial sentences were intended to become an important penal policy measure for treatment of perpetrators of minor offenses and at the same time to provide a substitute for short terms of imprisonment, which had been found relatively ineffective as a means of achieving rehabilitation of convicted offenders. However, the normative extent of the code’s provision for non-custodial penalties proved to be relatively narrow. Within the range of alternatives to custodial punishment curtailment of liberty was an option available only under 17.5% of the defined offenses. Under Article 54 §1 sentencing to curtailment of liberty was admissible for 24% of all offenses and under Article 57 §1.3 for 27.9% of the total. The potential possibilities of non-custodial treatment of offenders were circumscribed by the provisions of Articles 54 §2, 52, 59 and 60. A significant influence on the frequency of sentencing to curtailment of liberty was the actual incidence of criminal acts punishable by alternative form of treatment. Based on an analysis of Ministry of Justice and judicial statistics it appears that such acts were not among the most frequently committed offenses, amounting to about 10% of all convictions. The systematic growth of the proportion of sentences to curtailment of liberty, from 6.2% in 1970 to l8% in 1980, should, therefore, be regarded as achievement of the maximum level of possible sentences of this kind. If we consider the share of curtailment of liberty in the structure of sentences for offenses punishable by alternative forms of treatment we will find that there was a judicial bias towards curtailment of liberty. The frequency of such treatment of offenders fluctuated between 32.83% and 56.54%, while the range for fines came to 21.26%‒5I,99 % and for imprisonment to 3,4%‒21.26%. It can, therefore, be said that in the first decade following the 1969 Criminal Code’s entry into force curtailment of liberty fulfilled the purpose envisaged by the lawmakers, that is as an alternative to short terms of imprisonment. Undoubtedly, a factor contributing to the increase in the proportion of non-custodial sentences in the structure of final and conclusive judgments was the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, in particular its guidelines for the administration of justice and judicial practice issued on 30 May 1979 (VII KZP 31/1977) concerning sentencing policy with respect to offenses for which the prescribed punishment is, interchangeably, imprisonmet, curtailment of liberty or a fine. Imprisonment, these stated, should be a penalty imposed only in the last resort when non-custodial forms of treatment are deemed incapable of performing the function of protection of the legal order. If a salient characteristic of the 1970s was stability of legislative policy, which precluded the possibility of shaping penal policy by means of legislation, the 1980s, or more precisely the period from 12 December 1981 to 1989, saw the emergence of a tendency in the opposite direction. For it brought the adoption of numerous basic amendments in criminal legislation, the general thrust of which was towards severer difinition of criminal responsibility. This was reflected in a decrease in the proportion of non-custodial sentences in the structure of final and conclusive judgments (from 15.6% in 1981 to 8.2% in 1984) and a concurrent increase in the frequency with which courts sentenced offenders to imprisonment (from 25.3% in 1981 to 33.1% in 1984). During the years in which the rigorous provisions of the Special Criminal Responsibility Act were in force, that is in the period from 10 May 1985 to 30 June 1988, there was a systematic rise in the proportion of curtailment of liberty in the structure of sentences (from 10.1% in 1985 to 17.4% in 1987), which might have something to do with the introduction by the May legislation of provisions allowing for non-custodial treatment of offenders in summary proceedings. The 1988 amendments to the Criminal Code, aimed at relaxing definitions of criminal responsibility, included, albeit in only a limited degree, provisions relating to the applicability of curtailment of liberty. These changes reflected a desire to increase the significance of non-custodial treatment in penal policy. However, in judicial practice there ensued a decrease in sentencing to curtailment of liberty, from 10.5% in 1989 to 5.3% in 1990. The period of political, economic and social change in Poland which began in 1989 stimulated criminal law reform. The aim of numerous legislative change which followed was to reduce the punitive character of the Criminal Code. One reflection of this was greater provision for non-custodial treatment of offenders (introduced by the new Criminal Code enacted in 1995) through a broadening of the grounds for commuting sentences of imprisonment to curtailment of liberty or a fine under Article 54), reduction of the role of repeated criminality as an aggravating circumstance in punishment of offenders, and abolition of extended sentences for offenses classified as "hooligansm" or committed by repeat offenders. In 1991-1995 the share of curtailment of liberty in the structure of sentences held steady at a level of 3.5%‒3,9%, making it the lowest ever for the period in which the 1969 Criminal Code was in force. This was not a result of the greater repressiveness of the criminal justice system since we observed a drop in the frquency of sentences of imprisonment. The courts tended to favor the use of conditional suspension of custodial sentences (the share of which rose from 43.9% in 1989 to 55.1% in 1997) and fines (up from 4.9% in 1989 to 27.4% in 1997). The explanation should, rather, be sought in problems with execution of sentences to curtaiment of liberty, chief among them the job shrinkages caused by changes in the free-market economy. Analysis indicates that curtailment of liberty did not fulfill the expectations associated with this form of punishment. It did not become a significant instrument of penal policy nor did it contribute to reducing the scale of sentencing to terms of imprisonment. Even after a substantial widening of provision for punishment by curtailment of liberty its share of sentences ordered by the courts reached a level of only 5.2% (in 1977). The new Criminal Code has substantially expanded the possibilities of sentencing offenders to curtailment of liberty. This form of punishment is intended to be an important instrument of penal policy with respect to misdemeanors and minor offenses and to replace imprisonment and even fines if ordering the latter is thought to serve no purpose. At the same time the Criminal Code has introduced modifications in the legal shape of this punishment. By preserving, contrary to the intentions of the code’s original drafters, multivariate forms of punishment it gives curtailment of liberty some of the hallmarks of probation by introducing the possibility of imposing certain additional conditions and establishing supervision. The new elements in the design of curtailment of liberty have met with numerous criticisms of the doctrine (including by the authors of the article). How it will affect the functioning of the institution analyzed the immediate future will tell.

The aims of the present study have been: 1) to ascertain the actual conditions of the courts' decisions applying penalties and other measures towards multiple recidivists; 2) to determine the present penal policy towards this category of convicted persons; 3) to compare this policy with the assumptions included in the Penal Code in force. Punishment imposed upon multiple recidivists is regulated by the provisions of Art. 60, para. 2 and 3 Art. 61 of the Penal Code. Their formulation is as follows: on a perpetrator sentenced twice in the conditions specified in para. 1 (special basic recidivism), who has served altogether at leat one year of deprivation of liberty and in the period of 5 years after the serving of the last penalty commits again an intentional offence with the purpose of obtaining a material benefit or of a hooligan character, similar to at least one of the previously committed offencęs, the court shall impose a penalty within the limits of from three times the lowest sanction, but not less than 2 years, up to the highest statutory sanction increased by one half, and if the highest statutory sanction is not higher than 3 years: up to 5 years deprivation of liberty. The increase of the lowest statutory sanction provided in para. 1 or 2 shall not apply, when the offence is a serious offence; in this case the court shall consider the commission of the offence in the conditions specified in para 1 or 2 as a circumstance increasing the penalty. In particularly justified cases when even the lowest penalty imposed on the basis of Art. 60. paras 1 or 2 would be incommeasurably Severe by reason of the motives for the action of the perpetrator, his traits and personal conditions as well as his way of life before the commission and his behaviour after the perpetration of the offence, the court when imposing the penalty may refrain from applying the rules specified in Art. 60. paras 1 or 2; in these cases the court shall take into consideration the commission of the offence in the conditions specified in Art. 60, para 1or 2 as circumstances influencing increasing the penalty. With regard to a perpetrator sentenced in the conditions specified in Art. 60, para. 2 he court shall adjudge protective supervision; if adjudging this supervision is not sufficient to prevent recidivism, the court shall adjudge .the commitment of the sentenced person to a social readaptation centre. (Art. 62, para. 2). The present work has been based on the author's own research and to a minimum extent only on the analysis of the national statistical data. The point of departure for the study of the actual conditions of the courts decisions were the conditions specified in the Penal Code now in force. The conditions specified in Art. 61 of the Penal Code and related to the offender only have been assumed to form the ratio legis of special recidivism in the Polish penal legislation. If, however, when aplying this provision, the courts prefer the conditions related to the most recent act of the offender, this mignt be an indication of their different attitude towards the aim of punishment in the case of the discussed category of offenders. The existence of such divergences between the conditions of application of Art 61 of the Penal Code as included in the law on the one hand, and those applied by the courts on the other hand has been one of the hypotheses verified in the present study. The study has been based on the examination of court records. All the accessible records of criminal cases (230) have been included in it, in which Sentences were passed with regard to multiple recidivists (under Art 60. para. 2 and Art. 61 in connection with Art. 60, para. 2 of the Penal Code) in the District Court of the city of Poznań in the years 1975-1981. The question arised whether this could be treated as an equivalent to a random sample of the national population of convicted multiple recidivists. As shown by a comparison of distributions in question are highly convergent. A questionnaire to investigate the ourt records consisted of 41 questions concerning the convicted recidivist, his previous offences and criminal record, his last offence and the content of the last sentence. The impact of a number of variables on the application of Art. 61 of the Penal Code, on the length of the prison sentence and on the decision of commitment to a social readaptation centre has been analysed in succession. Conclusions from the study are as follows: 1. In the application of Art.61 of the Penal Code ,the predominating part is played by the conditions connected with the degree of socil danger of the act and with its legal label. The conditions connected with the person of the perpetrator seem to have a much smaller effect. The reason of this state of affairs may be seeked in the fact that the court is obligated by Art. 60, para.2 of the Penal Code to impose long-term penalties of deprivation or liberty regardless of the degree of social danger (seriousness) of the offence which may be trivial in particular cases. Therefore, it is not to be wondered at that in these cases the courts apply Art. 61 of the Penal Code so as to impose a lower or more lenient penalty in order to make it commeasurable with the offence. 1. The following conditions have been found to exert the greatest influence on the length of sentences to deprivation of liberty under Art. 60, para. 2: firstly, the legal appraisal of the offence and the related content of the instructions for meting out punishment specified in Art. 60, para. 2 of the Penal Code, and secondly, the degree of social danger of the offence. 2. The character of the offence and the appraisal of its social danger influence the sentence too, including the type of penalty, when Art. 61 of the Penal Code is applied by the court. This is probably a further result of following the same conditions already when deciding on the application of Art. 61 of the Penal Code. 3. When adjudging the commitment of convicted persons to a social readaptation centre, the courst were guided by the conditions connected with intense symptoms of demoralization of these persons and with a previous application of various penal measures towards them; thus the conditions were formally the same as those to be found in the Penal Code. At the same time, conditions connected with the recently committed offence were left out of account here. One should be particularly careful when interpreting the findings in this case aS the decisions in question may be conditioned by the courts' various attitudes towards the practical functioning of the centers, and by different purposes of their adjudgement in definite cases. 4. The length of the perod for which commitment to a social readaptation centre was adjudged has appeared to increase with the length of the sentence to deprivation of libety. Admittedly, outright conclusions as to the need for amendments of the provisions of the Penal Code in its part concerning recidivists do not follow immediately from the findings of the present study. These findings have. however, demonstrated the degree to which the instructions for meting out, punishment specified in Art. 60, para. 2 of the Penal Code sever the relation between the offence and punishment, as well as the fact that the corrective function of punishment imposed upon multiple recidivists - officially assumed by the legislator-has a fictious character in practice. In consequence, Art. 61 of the Penal Code is used in discord with its purpose; it is applied to adjust the adjudicated punishment to the seriousness of the offence committed.

Both the anthropological school of Lombroso, established in the late half of the 19th century, and the sociological school established by Ferri and other criminologists ( Liszt, Prins, van Hammel, Tarde) met with a keen interest in Poland. However, the anthropological school was criticized, as it was the case in other countries too, both by the classical school of penal law, and from the sociological point of view. A critical analysis of the views of Lombroso and his successors was made by the leading representative of the classical school of penal law in Poland in those days Krzymuski who postulated that recognition of the individual’s free will to be condition of his penal liability, Krzymuski opposed free will to be conception of a born criminal propagated by Lombroso. Lombroso’s theory was also criticized by Krzywicki, a sociologist and anthropologist who considered the former’s approach towards the conditions of crime to be too narrow, leaving out of account those resulting from the social and economic conditions. On the other hand, Polish criminologists considered it to be Lombroso’s unquestionable merit that he had called attention to the necessity of studying the offender's personality, and in this way initiated the modern criminology. Opinions of various sociological schools were discussed in the Polish literature and accepted by the majority of authors starting from the close of the 19th century. In particular, the most accepted one was the opinion that offence is a result of both individual and social factors, and the aim of punishment meted out by the court should be not only to deter. the perpetrator from committing offences, but also to reeducate him. Due to the fact that in the 19th-centuiy judicial practice the sentence depended on the extent of damage caused by the offender, it was emphasized in the Polish literature that punishment should take into consideration also the offender's individual features, as it is only then that it can fulfil its tasks (Stebelski). With the accepted division of offenders into professional and causal, the fact was stressed that - if the offender reveals a tendency to relapse into crime- the measures the society applies towards him should be more drastic since the society has to defend itself against incorrigible criminals in an effective way. Instead, more lenient measures should be applied towards causal offenders, such measures being sufficient for their reeducation. In the period between the two world wars, criminology in Poland became a separate branch and extended its range; the establishment of the Polish Criminological Society in 1921 and of the Department of Criminology at the Free Polish University in 1922, later (I932) transformed into the Criminological Institute, contributed to this situation. The Polish criminology of that period faced the task of studying and defining in detail the basic factors of crime: individual (endogenous) and social (exogenous). This was related to the necessity to learn about the sources of crime with the aim of its effective control by means of preparing a Penal Code and properly shaping the criminal policy (Wróblewski). When studying the individual factors of crime, particular attention was paid to the psychopathic personality. Criminal psychopaths were believed to suffer from a pathological moral defect resulting from their underdevelopment in the sphere of emotions. It was stated that psychopaths who committed an offence should not be recognized as mentally irresponsible (Nelken). Psychopathy cannot be treated psychiatrically; on the other hand, intensified resocialization of the offender is necessary here, conditions for this treatment created during his prison term. At the same time, an adequate segregation of prisoners should be applied based on the psychopathological criterion (Łuniewski). The science of the offender's personality was called criminal biology; it dealt with the physical and mental structure of the offender. Criminal biology was to make use of the general anthropological, psychological and psychiatric data as well as those gathered by means of other clinical methods. Aimed at gathering comprehensive data concerning the whole of the offender’s mental and physical properties, criminal biology should not confine itself to a mere specification of his various traits: it should also study their origin, methodically examining the development of these properties in the milieu in which the offender’s personality was formed. Thus the criminal-biological research must be made from the psychological and medical as well as sociological points of view. Particular importance was attached to detailed environmental research in the study of juvenile delinquents (Batawia). In the early Thirties, the Ministry of Justice initiated criminological- biological research in prisons. The research was carried out by special commissions with the use of a specially prepared comprehensive questionnaire . The greatest part was played by psychiatric and psychological examination. The criminal-biological research in prisons was interrupted by the outbreak of the war. In connection with the criminogenic role of alcoholism, criminologists spoke for a considerable reduction of production and sale of spirits. Moreover, an opinion was expressed that a commission of an offence in the state of a normal (the so-called physiological) intoxication should not result in the recognition of the offender as mentally irresponsible. Only pathological intoxication may be considered from the point of view of irrespossibility. The offender should not avail himself of his intoxication as a mitigating circumstance (Nelken). The scientists opposed the introduction of compulsory sterilization which was to be applied toward persons whose children could inherit serious pathological traits from them. The opposition had both scientific and humanistic grounds (Łuniewski, Nelken). Compulsory sterilization was not introduced. The main trend of the Polish criminology in the period between the wars corresponded with the sociological school which took into account the relationship between the endogenous (biological) and the exogenous (social) factors in the origins of crime. A vast majority of Polish criminologists opposed the conception of a “born criminal” put forward by Lombroso. Some of the Polish scholars of the period between the wars who used the term “criminal anthropology” (e.g. Rabinowicz), emphasized the evolution of this science which differed from the Lombroso’s doctrine, and postulated the social milieu as a factor be largely taken into consideration in the studies on the causes of crime. In the Polish criminology of those days, the stress was laid principally on criminal biology due to the fact that the internal factor is usually less conspicuous and more difficult to prove than the external one in the etiology of crime. It was emphasized that not all of persons who found themselves in unfavourable social conditions turned offenders (Neymark, Lemkin); therefore, the biological (somato psychological) factor determines the individual’s moral resistance to the unfavourable external conditions. On the other hand, also the social factor, in addition to the biological one, was included in the causes of crime, due to the considerable impact of living conditions on the human mind. The opinion was that - though the etiology of an offence is usually determined by a combination of the external and internal factors - in each case one should attempt to find out which of these factors prevailed in the origin of a given act; this should also be taken into account in the criminological prognosis. In general, the chance for correction is smaller in the case of an offender of the endogenous type who requires a more thorough and longer resocialization as compared with one of the exogenous type; this should be taken into account by the court when meting out punishment (Rabinowicz, Lemkin). The Polish Penal Code of 1932 (in force till 1969) was an expression of the compromise between the classical school of penal law and the sociological school. In the code, many legal structures included in the General Part were formulated in accordance with the achievements of the science of penal law in its classical form; this concerns particularly the definition or the essence of crime and the principles of liability including that of subjectivism as responsibility for a culpable act. A compromising character was given in the code to meting out punishment which was conditioned not only by the weight of the offence according to the classical principle of retribution and deterrence, but also by the offender's personality and the life he had led hitherto according to the instructions of the sociological school (Art. 54). The discussed code did not adopt from the Italian positivism the so-called ante-criminal prevention, i.e.. the application of sanctions towards an individual who has not committed any prohibited act yet. Also indeterminate sentences were not adopted in the Code in relation to penalties and not protective measures, as this would be contradictory to the principle of individualization of punishment. Under the influence of the sociological school the Code contained of a possibility of suspension of ęxceution of the penalty, and of its extraordinary rnitigation, as well as the release from prison before the expiration of term (separately regulated by the law of 1927-) and a possibility to mete out a more severe penalty in the case of recidivists. In addition to the medical security measures, which consisted in the commitment of the offender to a mental hospital and which the court could apply towards the persons guilty of acts committed in the state of mental irresponsibility or decreased responsibility, the code introduced - basing on the postulates of the sociological school-isolating security measures applied towards the offenders whose acts were connected with reluctance to work, and towards recidivists and professional as well as habitual criminals if their staying at liberty endangered the legal order. The isolating security measures were applied together with the penalty (not instead of it), the necessity of their application connected with the ‘’ state of danger", i.e. the perpetrator's probability of commission of further offences; in the criminological literature, subjective and state of objective criteria of the danger were distinguished (Strasman). According to Art. 84 of the Penal Code, offenders of this type were committed to a special institution for at least 5 years, and the court decided after the termination of each such period whether it was necessary to prolong the commitment for the next five years. In the Penal Code of 1932, also the measures applied towards juvenile delinquents were divided into educational measures on the one hand, and commitment to a corrective institution on the other hand, depending on the juvenile's age and of his possible discernment or lack there of when committing the forbiden act.

1. We are now entering in Poland into the second decade of the new penal system in force. The period of time which has elapsed: since the introduction of this system is long enough to enable us to take a close look at the new legal institutions envisaged in the system, at the practical value of these institutions and trends observed in their application. This paper is devoted to the above considerations, or to be more exact, to the part played by the application of penal measures. In order to characterize roughly the guidelines underlying the above penal codifications it should first be stated that what the legislators had in mind was a need to treat serious and petty offences in a different way. Those who were guilty of serious crimes were to suffer from penalties of immediate deprivation of liberty, and, exceptionally, that of capital punishment. Some categories of offenders regarded as dangerous, repulsive or persistent were to meet augmented penal repressions. Among these were perpetrators of hooligan, type offences, and recidivists some of whom, after completing their sentences, were to be treated with special penal measures, such as protective supervision and/or placing in a social readaptation centre. At the same time various lenient penal measures were to be imposed against perpetrators of petty offences. Sometimes proceedings against such persons were to be discontinued. Besides, some petty offences became depenalized (for the first time in 1967 and then on a larger scale in 1971) by considering them to be transgressions and getting them transfered from the courts to the Penal Administrative Commissions. The Penal Code, the Penal Executive Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure have been in force since 1st January, 1970. However, it should be borne in mind that penal legislation is not confined to the above mentioned codes. It also embraces some statutes with two very important ones issued in the early seventies: the Code of Transgressions included in the set of acts of 20th May 1971 (Dz.U. no. 12, para 114— 118) making up a codified system of transgressions law and the Financial Penal Code of 26th Oct. 1971 (Dz.U. no. 28, para 260). It is only after the above acts had been passed the process of codification of the Polish penal legislation was completed. If one takes into consideration the need to have a minimum period of time necessary for learning how to make use of new regulations and the date when the previously mentioned acts came into force, as compared with the 1969 codes, one should take the year 1972 as a starting point for the analysis of the penal policy as determined by the new penal codification in the full form. 1. The problems of the applications of penalties by courts arising from the 1969 penal code regulations are among the most complex ones and bear evidence of the fact that at this particular issue, the regulations of the present code are not exceptionally successful. For the purposes of our discussion we should try to introduce some order into this complex subject. Therefore, we shall distinguish three groups among the regulations of the imposition of the penalty by the courts. The first group will include the regulations from the special part of the penal code (and other penal acts), which describe the kind and limits of penal sanctions provided for the perpetrators of crimes envisaged in the regulations. The second group shall include the regulations from the general part of the Penal Code (or statutes with general part, such as the financial Penal Code or Chapter 37 of the military part of the Penal Code) which modify the norms found in the regulations belonging to the above first group. The above modifications concern the changes in the limits of sanctions, rules of the order of choice: among the alternative sanctions, or possibilities of application of penal measures which are not provided for a particular offence. The third group will encompass the regulations specifying the principles to be used by courts in choosing the kind and extent of penal measures against offenders. The essential feature of the above legal system is that it lacks rules which would provide one strictly defined penalty for an offender of a given offence. The court is always faced with the necessity of making a choice of a penalty: first of all, whether to apply any punishment at all, or to confine oneself to a conditional discontinuance of the proceedings (arid sometimes, if the statute makes it possible, to renounce the execution of the penalty). If a sentence is passed, what kind of penalty is to be imposed, whether it should be combined with another basic penalty, or additional penalties, punitive financial award or preventive means should be made use of. What then should be the directives for the court in making the choice? The answer to this question is provided by the Penal Code, above all in Art. 50. In this article three different directives are included for the court in imposing a penalty at its discretion: (1) the degree of social danger of the offence, (2) regard for the social effectiveness of the penalty, and (3) the preventive and educational effect on the person convicted. These directives, dressed as they are in a new wording, correspond, as it were, to the classical purposes of punishment. The first of these is to give justice, i.e. to mete out retribution for the "evil" done by the offender in the form of suffering proportional to this "evil". The second purpose is general prevention, i.e. a tendency to punish the offender in order to prevent others from committing offences. The third purpose of punishment is special prevention, i.e. the effect on the offenders themselves in order to prevent them from committing further criminal acts. The difficulties involved in the implementation of the principle of justice once it ceases to be understood literally as that of "eye for eye, tooth for tooth”, are well known and need not be mentioned here. One ought, however, to point out that there is no "objective" or "invariable" scale of translating the degree of "evil" committed by the offender into the suffering caused to him, This scale is arbitrary and variable. Its variability can be seen both when the degrees of penalties imposed for the same offences at various times are compared, and, what is even more significant, when the comparison is made of penalties for the offences against various values protected by the law. It is thus clear that various penal policies can be pursued based on the principle of just retribution within the framework of the same legal system. The fact that § 1, Art. 50 of the Penal Code makes a mention of the social effect of a penalty rather than of general prevention was not accidental. However, from the argumentation included in the Introduction to the draft of the Penal Code it can easily be seen that what the authors of the draft really had in mind was that social effect meant instilling fear for the punishment in the prospective offenders. In the statements concerning special prevention only two forms of such effect on the convicted persons were distinguished, i.e. prevention and education. The first term refers, as may be judged from the argumentation in the Introduction to the draft of the Penal Code, to making it impossible for the convicted person to pursue crime by physically isolating him from the society in a penal institution or to ultimate exclusion from the society by the application of capital punishment. The second term is self-explanatory: education means that the attitudes and motivation of a convicted person are to be transformed in such a way that he will comply with the requirements of the law in the future. An essential draw back in Art. 50 of the Penal Code is that it includes three separate recommendations as to the court’s decisions on the way of dealing with the offender on the assumption that each of these recommendations would lead to the same result without any collisions between them. Had such a possibility come to the notice of the legislator at the proper time, the above directives would have been classified according to some order of importance or a regulation would have been introduced to solve any collision between them. As the main interest in this work is centered on the penal policy of the courts, of particular importance are the statements made by the Supreme Court concerning the content and interpretation of § 1 Art. 50 of the Penal Code rather than the opinions formulated in the doctrine of the law. Initially, the Supreme Court’s position was that the directives of § 1 Art. 50 of the Penal Code were all equal. But in 1975 for offenders convicted for the misappropriation of social property of high value the Supreme Court recommended the use of the directive of retaliation and general deterrence without mentioning the special prevention directive, thus making some distinction between them. Finally, in 1977 it became clear that the Supreme Court had accepted "just retaliation" as a priority directive in imposing penalties. Within the directive of "just retaliation" (social danger of the act) some shift in the emphasis can be noticed. At first the social danger of the act was regarded to be a synthesis of objective and subjective elements, and finally, the main importance was stressed of one of the objective elements, i.e. the extent of the damage caused or the benefit gained by the perpetrator. Thus a problem arises what value should be attached to these modifications in the positions taken by the Supreme Court. In anticipating further conclusions one is tempted to say now that these modifications were associated by significant augmentation of the penalties imposed by the courts. At least two explanations may be offered here. One is that the reason for the stiffening of the penal policy can be traced to the courts' making a greater use of the "retaliation" directive in the imposition of penalties. This may have an additional support in the fact that the penalties became more severe at the very time when the shift occurred in the emphasis from recommending the taking into consideration of all the three directives of Art. 50 of the Penal Code to "retaliation". Simultaneously special stress was to be put on making the responsibility more objective in the form of close relationship between the fine and the extent of the damage caused. In the second explanation both the above mentioned reasons, i.e. emphasis on retaliation and stiffening of penalties, would be regarded as caused by a third party. They can arbitrarily be called a process of making the legal values more rigid in the circles providing directives for the criminal justice system apparatus. The rigidity would manifest itself either in regarding the offences committed in this country to become more socially dangerous or the offenders to deserve a more severe treatment. It should, therefore, be noted that none of the directives mentioned in the Art. 50 of the Penal Code is unequivocally leading to a lenient or to a stiff criminal policy. Uniter the banners of either of the directives some offenders, some offences, may be considered as calling for lenient penal measures, whereas other offenders, other offences - may be thought of as deserving severe penalties. Thus, the final shape of the penal policy depends on how the line is drawn between those "calling for" lenient treatment and those "deserving" punitive reaction. Taking all the above into consideration the present author thinks of the second explanation as more probable than the first. 1. It should be noted that only the penal measures imposed for offences dealt with by public prosecutor are analysed. Thus the analysis will not include a decreasingly small number of convictions for offences prosecuted by the complainant himself (about 8 thousand in 1972 and 3 thousand in 1980). Although the capital punishment, as seen from Table 1, is imposed in a few cases only, its very existence in the Polish criminal law is strongly criticized by some lawyers and criminologists. Among penal measures used by common courts the penalty of immediate deprivation of liberty takes the second place after the capital punishment on the scale of severity. It is imposed in months and years (Art. 32 §2) and may range from 3 months to 15 years (art. 32 §1) and 25 years. If one analyses information on the duration of the above penalties, four characteristic elements have to be noted: (1) In 1980 for only one in 11 persons the immediate deprivation of liberty was shorter than one year (in 1975 - one in nine and one in four or five in 1972); (2) the immediate deprivation of liberty was most often imposed for the period between one and two years: over 40 per cent and in some years nearly 50 per cent of all persons had such a penalty imposed on them; (3) a long-term penalty (i.e. 3 years and more) was imposed on one person in five over the period 1975— 80 (in 1972 it was one in seven); (4) the absolute number of most severe sentences (over 10 to 15 and 25 years) was on the increase systematically till 1976. It should be particularly emphasized as from 1975 a decrease has been observed in the total number of imposing the penalty of immediate deprivation of liberty. The most commonly used penal measure was deprivation of liberty with conditional suspension of the execution (Art. 73 of the Penal Code). According to Art. 75 of the Penal Code the court when suspending the execution of the penalty of deprivation of liberty can, among other things, impose one or more obligations provided for in the above article. These obligations were imposed on the persons sentenced to the penalty of deprivation of liberty more and more frequently. The courts most often obliged the sentenced persons "to refrain from abusing alcohol", "to perform specified works or render specified contributions for social purposes" and "to perform remunerated work, to pursue education or prepare himself for an occupation". What is also interesting is that the courts have ordered more and more obligations, or to put it differently, they have less and less often confined themselves to ordering one obligation only. Thus the court’s action in this respect has been intensified. Irrespective of ordering the above obligations the court suspending the execution of penalty of deprivation of liberty may, for the test period, "place the sentenced person under the supervision of a designated person, institution or social organization" (Art. 76 § 2). The fraction of those placed under supervision in the totals of liberty was stable in the early seventies (30— 31 per cent), it began to rise in 1974 and reached nearly 40 per cent in 1980. The court may conditionally suspend the execution of a penalty of deprivation of liberty of up to 2 years when sentencing for an intentional offence and of up to 3 years when sentencing for an unintentional offence. (Art. 73 §1). Over the period 1972-80 certain changes were also observed in the extent of these penalties. They were similar to those of the extent in the penalties of immediate deprivation of liberty. They can be summarized as follows: (1) a very significant fall occurred in the fraction of penalties below 1 year (from 45.7 to 12.3 per cent); (2) the most often suspended penalty of deprivation of liberty was that of 1 year (36.6 to 44 per cent); (3) the percentage of suspended penalties over 1 year and up to 2 years increased markedly (from 17.7 to 44.1 per cent). The imposition of a penalty of deprivation of liberty, both immediate and conditionally suspended, is associated with the possibility (and in some cases - an obligation) of imposing a fine in an amount from 500 to 1 000 000 zlotys (Art. 36 §2 - 4. Unfortunately, the judicial statistics do not distinguish (except for some offences) whether the fine is imposed together with immediate or suspended sentence of deprivation of liberty. It turns out that the persons sentenced for the above penalties suffered from a fine quite often and this additional burden became more and more frequent: in 1972 the percentage of penalties of unconditional or suspended deprivation of liberty was 61.1, and in 1980 - 68.1. In the period of only 8 years 1972 - 80 almost no fines were imposed up to 1 000 zlotys, their number having decreased from 13.6 thousand to 82 and the respective contributions from 15.0 to 0.1 per cent. The penalty of limitation of liberty is among the new penal measures which after some hesitation have become accepted in practice. In the period under discussion the contribution made by sentences of this penalty increased threefold: in 1980 they amounted to 18.0 per cent of all sentences. In other words, one in six persons sentenced in cases initiated by public prosecutor is punished by limitation of liberty. This penalty imposes some limitations on a person sentenced, e.g. he may not change his place of abode (Art. 33 §1), and can take three forms. One of them is an obligation of "performing unremunerated supervised work for public purposes from 20 do 50 hours per month" (Art. 34 §1). The penalty of limitation of liberty in this form was applied to 41.4 per cent of sentenced persons in 1980 as compared with 38.1 per cent in 1972. The second form is applicable only to persons employed in a socialized work establishment and consists in deducing 10 to 25 per cent of the remuneration for work for the benefit of the State Treasury (Art. 34 §2). It was applied to 46,4 per cent of sentenced persons in 1980 as compared with 58.8 per cent in 1972. The third form - most seldom applied - is used when the court directs a person not being in an employment relation to an appropriate socialized work establishment for the purpose of performing work there and deduces from 10 do 25 per cent of the remuneration for work (Art. 34 §3). It was, however, applied in 12.2 per cent of cases in 1980 as compared with 3.1 per cent in 1972. Although the penalty of limitation of liberty may be not less than 3 months and not more than 2 years (Art. 33 §1), its minimum duration of 3 months has lately been imposed in 1.1— 1.3 per cent of sentenced persons as compared with 5.2 per cent in 1972. The most commonly imposed duration was over 6 month to 1 year. In 1980 nearly one person sentenced in 3 had it imposed on for a period from 1 to 2 years while in 1972 this happened to one person in 25. Again, like the penalty of unconditional deprivation of liberty, deprivation of liberty with suspension, fine imposed together with deprivation of liberty, the penalty of limitation of liberty shows an ever marked tendency to be imposed most infrequently in its lower extent and most often in its high and highest extent. The same applies to the fine (Art. 36 §1). It can be adjudged in an amount from 500 to 25 000 zlotys, i.e. within much narrower limits than that imposed together with a penalty of deprivation of liberty. The changes which took place in the years 1972— 80 as regards the extent of the fine, resemble those which occurred in the case of a fine adjudged together with deprivation of liberty (Table 1). We shall finish our discussion of basic penalties with two pieces pf information. The imposition of the supplementary penalty only (Art. 55) was confiscation of property in 90 per cent of cases, and prohibition of operating motor driven vehicles in the remaining 10 percent. Educational and corrective measures applied (Art. 9 §3) consisted in placing in a borstal in some dozen percent of cases, which is a kind of deprivation of liberty. The largest group, about half of all on whom these measures were imposed, was placed under the supervision of a probation officer. 1. We shall now try to formulate some general conclusions drawn from the date on the structure an extent of penal measures. We shall use four groups of indexes to present the conclusions in most concise form (Table 2). These indexes will describe the most important statistically determined aspects of Poland's penal system. The first group of indexes refers to the extent of crime known to the police. Traditionally the penal measures applied are thought of as a response to this crime. Therefore, if one wants to understand their evolution one has to look into the nature of the evolution of crime. The determination of the extent of crimes known to the police can be carried out in several ways. It can be based on the data on the offences (taken from the police and public prosecutor’s statistics) or on the data on the offenders supplied as a rule by the judicial, statistics. The data on the serious offences known to the police encompass acts chosen in an arbitrary way limited by the extent of those published in the Statistical Year Books for the years 1971— 80. The number of sentences can be determined more simply from the number of sentences for acts regarded as the most serious ones by the legislator (Art. 5 of the Penal Code). All this information is presented in the form of rates per 100 000 total population (data on the offences known to the police) or per 100 000 adult population (data on sentences). By comparing the changes in these rates two conclusions can be drawn. First, the number of serious crimes known to the police as well as that of the crime perpetrators brought to trial during the seventies was at a similar level although it showed some variations. The general rate of offences known to the police was measured in three different ways, namely the rate of crimes known to the police, the persons found guilty and the sentenced ones. It proves the relevance of two well known observations: the first one is that when the criminal case passes along the subsequent links in the chain of the justice system (police, public prosecutor’s office, court) the size of the crime known to the police becomes smaller. The second observation is that serious crimes are less susceptible to such fluctuations. The second conclusion drawn from the comparison of crime rates introduced above is that it he statement about the stable extent of crime first of all, that of most serious crime, is of greatest importance for further discussion. This statement warrants the opinion that the observed changes in the structure and intensity of penal measures cannot be accounted for by the corresponding changes in the extent and character of the crime known to the police. The reasons of these changes should be traced to changes in legal values, i.e. in the evolution of the opinions as to what kind of penal reactions form the "proper" response to definite offences against the law, what penalty is "adequate" to the amount of social danger involved in the offence and, the belief in the general deterrent effect of severe penalties. The data on the application of preliminary detention show that about one in four persons at the time of being convicted had experienced deprivation of liberty. As expected, this experience was specially common among the persons on which the court had subsequently imposed the penalty of immediate deprivation of liberty. The data collected in the third part of Table 2 on the structure of the penal measures imposed provide a remainder of the changes in these measures. Among them one can observe a certain limitation of sentencing to immediate deprivation of liberty, and a much more marked decrease in the number of sentences to a suspended deprivation of liberty. The former change may be regarded as a symptom of what is so much needed in the Polish criminal justice system, i.e. of eliminating penalties associated with deprivation of liberty and the ever increasing application of penalties without deprivation of liberty in the sentencing practice, not only in verbal statements. As for the latter change it is difficult to take an unequivocal attitude. It is because one should remember that period 1972 - 80 was not only characterized by a fall in the per cent contribution of sentences of suspended deprivation of liberty but also by a rise in the per cent contribution of placing under supervision, ordering obligations, increasing the number of such obligations, imposing fines together with deprivation of liberty, the extent of which is also increasing. We shall now consider the indexes to determine the rate of the application of penal measures. Table 2 shows two such groups chosen out of a variety of others. One group is made up of the numbers of persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty per 100 thousand adult population. The second group constitutes the mean values of various penalties. The above indexes help us to focus our attention on two contradictory, in the author’s opinion, trends. One trend, to limit the imposition of the penalty of immediate deprivation of liberty, is best seen in the fall in the number of sentences to this penalty (per 100 000 adult population) from 272,7 in 1972 to 172,1 in 1980, i.e. by 37 per cent. The other trend, in the opposite direction, is seen in the ’"rates" of sentences to long penalties of deprivation of liberty, i.e. 3 and over years, and particularly, 5 and over years. During only 4 years the mean penalty of immediate deprivation of liberty became longer by nearly 6 months from 19 months in 1972 to over 25 month in 1976. The tendency to augment the penalties has also manifested itself in the rise by as much as 25 per cent of the mean penalty of suspended deprivation of liberty: from about 12 months ip 1972 to about 15 months in 1980. This augmentation seems quite Irrational as it is a well-known fact that for a large majority of such penalties there is no need to have them executed. At the same time there is no evidence that the penalties imposed in the previous extent were ineffective or their lengthening had led to higher effectiveness. The next pair of mean values given in Table 2 provide information about the extent of both kinds of fine. These values must be analysed in close relation with significant devaluation of money in Poland in the seventies. Therefore, the table contains information about the mean monthly salary in the socialized economy in this country (the last line). During the period 1972— 80 the salaries increased more than twofold, but the fines increased fivefold. As early as in 1972 the mean value of either of the above fines was equal to a little over one month salary, in 1980 the fine was equal to more than a two-month salary, and the other fine amounted almost to a three-month salary; the repressiveness of the above penal measures increased markedly. We shall complete our discussion of Table 2 with one general remark. When observing the evolution of penal policy in Poland in the span of the last 25 years, two features may be distinguished. One constant tendency, though not without some hesitations and obstructions, to augment the impact of individual penal measures based almost exclusively on imposing one type of punishment. The second feature is a tendency to combine these effects by simultaneously using various kinds of punishment imposed on a sentenced person. This tendency was noticeable in the sixties, but it became more marked in the light of the present-day regulations which have opened up new and greater possibilities in this respect. The tendencies like the above in the penal policy raise some doubts as to their effectiveness and moral validity. They seem to convey impression that the penal measures in Poland have been undergoing a process of accelerated devaluation. It looks as if in order to attain the same aims of penal policy simultaneous application of the ever increasing measures in ever increasing doses should be resorted to. It is most doubtful whether such a devaluation really takes place as similar results were obtained earlier by means of less severe penal measures. One cannot escape the impression that the present penal policy in Poland is characterised by a certain extravagancy manifesting itself in the above accumulation of various forms of repressiveness instead of making an attempt to use them in an alternative way. The future development of Polish penal policy calls for a fundamental analysis and gradual reorientation.

In Poland in recent years, the number of people sentenced each year in what is know as „special multiple recidivism (Art.60 § 2) has been in the order of 1,500-1,700. This paragfaph of the Penal Code, which applies to offences against property and to acts of hooliganism, provides for a drastic stepping-up of penal Sanctions. Under the Penal Code, the minimum sentence for multi-recidivists in this category is two years' imprisonment, unless there are mitigating circumstances. Hence it may be concluded that the legislation regards this group of effenders as constituting a specially serious danger to law and order. The sudy described below was designed to elucidate if that is really the case. The subjects in this study were all multi-recidivists sentenced under this paragraph by the courts in five voivodships of Poland, in the years 1975 and 1976. Over 1,700 criminal cases brought against 131 persons were analysed. For technical reasoni, it was not possible to make a random sample. Nevertheless, if we take into consideration the fact that the subjects constituted 10% of all multi-recidivists convicted of special multiple recidivism within this period, as well as the fact that the main social and demographic data and the kinds of crimes committed by the multi-recidivists in our group are almost identical to such data in other investigations based on random samples, we can take it that the sample used in our study may be considered as representative of all the offenders convicted of crimes in what is known as „specual multiple recidivism”. The methods used was to analyse the court records and the data given in the register of convicted persons and in the register of prisoners. Efforfs were made to collect information from the records on all crimes committed by the recidivists in our group, right from the beginning of their criminal career. The study fell into the following headings: 1) basic socio-demographic data, 2) crime record, 3) structure of offences committed, 4) effectiveness of penal measures used, 5) the penal policy adopted towards our subjects in different periods. Finally, conclusions drawn from the present study, as well asfrom other studies of multi-recidivism are presented. Some basic characteristics of this group are as follows: The mean age of the subjects was 40, and their mean age at the time of the first conviction: 21. The percentage of multi-recidivists who began their criminal carrer being aged 25 and over was higher in this group than in other studies. The educational level of the men in this group was much lower than that of the male manual workers employed in the public economy. Nearly 4O% of the subjects had no trade, and among those who did work, most of their jobs consisted of the simplest manual work not requiring any qualifications. Yet it was found that only about 40% of the subjects had worked regularly before their first conviction, and that nearly 39%o had never worked at all. The average number of convictions per subject was 7. The mean length of prison sentence given was 31.9 months (that is, over 2.5 years), while the average stay in prison was 24.44 months, that is, just over two years. Out of 922 sentences, 43.1% did not exceed 18 months. The percentage of prison sentences of five years and over was only 6.6%. These facts may indicate that the offenders in this group had not committed serious crimes that were a real threat to law and order. But the sentences passed for the first two cases were statistically significantly lower than those imposed for later crimes. A similar statistically significant difference was noted as regards length of successive periods spent at liberty. After each period in prison, the periods at liberty became successively shorter. Nevertheless generally speaking the tempo of recidivism was very high in this group. Out of a total number of 818 periods spent in freedom, 11.4% had a duration not exceeding a month, while 40% did not exceed six months in duration. The percentage of periods of freedom that lasted for more than three years was barely 7.4% in this group. As for the structure of offenies committed by the subjects in this group, offences against property dominated, for 85.9% of the total number of 1,784 offences committed were offences of this type, offences against the person 3.48% of the total, offences against authority 3.48%, and offences against the family 1.23%. Theft of private property accounted for 50% of all the offences committed by the recidivists in this group. Serious crimes, such as rape, homicide, or robbery, constituted barely 2.2% of all the offences committed by this group, and by far the most were robberies. But even robbery, regarded as a serious crime, formed a tiny percentage of all the offences committed, for out of the total numbet of 1,784 offences, 37 were robberies. In more than 75% of the crimes against property, the sums obtained were no more than 5,000 zlotys, while in only 11% of the total cases did the sum obtained exceed 10,000 zlotys . Several methods were used to assess the effectiveness of imprisonment. The first method was to work out the correlation between the variable "time in prison” and the variable "time at in freedom". This correlation turend out to be nearly 0 (r = 0.02). This means that we can reject the hypothesis that there is a positive connection between length of imprisonment and time spent in freedom. The second method was to study the length of time spent in freedom after periods of imprisonment of various lengths: up to 6 months, from 7 to 12 month., from 1 to 2 years, from 2 to 3 years, and 3 years and over. Here, too, there was no significant correlation (X2 = 5.10; df = 12), which is below the level of significance. The third method was to try to find out if there was a significant diffence in duration of freedom between the recidivists sentenced to terms of up to 6 months, and those sentenced to three years and over. The aim of this method was to discover if what are regarded as long terms in prison are followed by longer terms in the outside world. In other words, it would be interesting to know if long-term incarceration has a deterrent effect. In this case, too, no significant statistical defferences were found (X2 = O,32; dt= 3, which is below the level of significance). Thus it would seem that in our group of subjects' length of time in prison had no effect at all on the tempo of recidivism. This was confirmed by analysis of the duration of the first stay in prison as compared with the subsequent time spent in freedom: (X2 = 2.80; df = 4, which is below the level of significance). There have been more and more frequent assertions of late, that the Polish criminal justice system has becoming more and more punitive. The present study tried to test whether these assertions are justified with reference to the population of multi-recedivists. Hence the period 1948-1978 was divided into five stages more or less corresponding to different phases of penal policy in Poland. These stages are as follows: Period I (l948-1955), Period II (1956-1960), Period III ( 1961-1965), Period IV (1966-1969), and Period V (197O-1978). The next step was to determine the character of penal policy towards recidivists during these various stages. As regards the length of the first prison sentences, the t test for the significance of the differences between the means showed that the mean duration of prison sentences in Period I (which was a very punitive period) was significantly greater than the duration of sentences passed in Period II and III. On the other hand, the mean duration of sentences passed in Periods I and IV showed no significant difference. This means that from the high figure un the "Stalin era”, the mean length of first prison sentences fell sharply in the next decade (especially in the „post October 1956" period), after which it gradually rose again, till in the period 1966-1969 it had reached a level not much lower than that of the "Stalin era". A similar analysis was made of the second prison sentences meted out. Our findings were that during the whole time under review there were no drastic changes of penal policy towards persons previously sentenced. (None of the differences between the means representing the duration of second prison sentences were statistically significant). The highest mean length of prison sentences was noted in Period I. There was a sharp fall in Period II, followed again by a gradual rise, until Period V, when length of sentence again was nearly as great as in Period I. Since similar results were obtained when the means of the length of third prison sentences in the various periods were compared, as well as the means for the length of all sentences meted out in all five periods (here the tendency we have been discussing was particularly evident), the hypothesis as to the steadily increasing punitive character of the punitive justice system in Poland would seem to be borne out by the evidence. Use of the means has this drawback: that with the exception of the standard deviation we have no other information about the sentences coming into different duration categories. For this reason we carried out an extra test, which consisted in comparing the distribution of sentences in the same five periods, but in categories with sentences of up to 1 year, from 1 year to 2 years, and sentences of two years and over. Here, too, the same tendency was found (X2=119.19; df = 8; p

There is in Hungary a many years tradition. of gathering and publishing criminal statistics and its theoretical analysis. This tradition dates back to the early 19th century. In the modern days, it was discontinued in the years 1944-1956 only. However, in 1957, the publication of the basic data of criminal statistics in Statistical Yearbooks published by the central statistical Office was started anew. As shown by an analysis of the trends of the number of convictions of adults in the years 1944-1984 based on official sources, there is a high substantial changes in these trends with changes in the provisions of the penal law and to some extent in the socio-political climate. The following can thus be noticed: 1. A very big number of convictions in the late fourties and early fifties (with the culminating point in 1952), accompanied by rapid drops in the years when amnesty laws were passed or new provisions of the penal law were introduced. 2. A great drop in the number of convictions in 1956 and, 1957 which was related directly first of all to the course of events before and after October 23, 1956, and to the fact that a part of the jurisdiction of common courts of law was taken over by special courts of law was taken over by special courts the activity of which is not reflected in the analysed statistical data. 3. A relative stabilization of the number of convictions in the years of gradual socio-political consolidation ( 1958-1962). 4. A gradual increase in the number of convictions after the entering into force of the Penal Code of 1961 and its amendment of 1971. Accompanied by intermittent drops in the amnesty years and in the years when provisions that modified the Penal Code entered into force. 5. An increase in the number of convictions after the entering into force of the Penal Code of 1978. The rate of convictions per 100,000 of the population in 1984 was 2'5 times higher than in 1952, but not much lower than the 1961 rate. The rise in crime in the recent years is also evident in the available data from the police and public prosecutor's statistics. The number of reported offences went up by one-third in the period 1965-1985 and has a constant upward trend. Among the offences reported most numerous are offences against property (about 60 per cent of all reported offences), traffic offences (about 12-13 per cent), offences against public order (hooliganism and parasitism in particular), and offences against person (about 7-8 per cent). As compared with 1965, the number of burglaries was 3.5 times as big in the eighties, and the number of robberies - 7 . times. The number of traffic offences increased by over one-third as well. Also offences against person reveal a small upward trend, with the number of homicides being stable. However, the number of homicides in Hungary has for many years been considerably larger than the mean European figure (mean homicide rate per 100,000 of the population amounting to 3.8 in the years 1979--1983). The rise in crime concerned financial offences also (offences against the foreign currency exchange regulations, against customs regulations, tax offences) which are included in ,the group of offences against the national economy. The penal policy of the Hungarian courts has rather frequently been subject to spectacular transformations. In the early seventies, stabilization was achieved in this policy which manifested itself by a limited application of unconditional deprivation of liberty and by a broad use of fine and other measures not involving deprivation of liberty. However, the rise in crime in the eighties influenced a more frequent application of unconditional deprivation of liberty, which resulted in the growth of prison population. In 1979, the number of persons deprived of liberty amounted to 16,764 (157 per 100,000 of the population), while in 1984 the respective number was 21,884 (205 per 100.000 of the population). In Hungary, conditional suspension of the execution of the penalty of deprivation- of liberty is not as popular as in other European socialist countries. For every fifth convicted person, the execution of penalty is suspended. In 1973, the courts for the- first time passed a greater number of fines (48.8 per cent) than prison sentences (43.9 per cent). In the-following years, the share of fines in the structure of penalties even exceeded 50 per cent. However, after entering into force of the new Penal code, an unexpected drop in the number of fines took place things to the which was due among other fact that some of the petty offences were removed from the Penal Code , and that a new penal measure without deprivation of liberty, i.e. probation, was introduced. In 1983, the share of fines dropped to 40 per cent of all sentences. The Hungarian courts were most reluctant to apply the penalty of corrective and educational work as soon as the penalty was introduced in 1950. For a dozen-odd years the share of this penalty in all penalties imposed never exceeded 10 per cent. After the 1961 Penal Code was introduced the penalty of corrective and educational work showed an upward trend (up to 15,8 per cent in 1964), but later on started to fall up, to 4 per cent in 1983. In the years 1962 -1983. common courts sentenced 105 persons to death penalty, for qualified homicide in the vast majority of cases. Since 1968, this penalty has been applied exlusively towards the perpetrators of homicide. In 1984, the extent of reported crime in Hungary was similar to that found in Poland (1, 470 per 100,000 o0f the population); however, in Hungary the response to the rise in crime has been in general much more balanced and quiet.