THE EBBS AND FLOWS. ON THE SCOPE OF CRIMINALIZATION IN POLISH CRIMINAL LAW FROM 2012 TO 2022

Abstract

In modern criminal law, the scope of criminalization in different legal systems is considered an important part of the description of these systems. This fact is not surprising, since criminalization and possible changes in its scope are closely related to the assessment of the situation of the individual, both in the context of the rights and freedoms to which he is entitled, and when the issue of criminalization is dealt with by looking at this phenomenon from the perspective of the protection to which individuals and societies are entitled (not only, but to a large extent, criminal law protection) in relation to individual goods, the violation or exposure of which is considered socially harmful. This article takes as its object of analysis the changes in criminalization in Poland in the last decade (2012 – 2022). It analyzes and evaluates both changes in criminalization in the sense of expanding or narrowing the catalog of crimes, as well as changes in the intensity of criminalization, by which the author understands the tightening or softening of statutory threats of punishment. The latter is also discussed taking into account the use of legislative technique, aimed at shifting the emphasis from the judicial power to shape the punishment imposed in a specific criminal case, to the power of the legislature to set the statutory threat so that this power is exaggeratedly limited, mainly through the narrow inclusion in the law itself of the possibility of choosing the type of punishment and its lower and upper limits of the statutory threat.