Juveniles - young criminals or lost children? Legal situation in Poland in the light of applicable regulations

Abstract

The aim of the article is to describe the legal situation of minors in Poland in the context of new legal regulations. The authors present the new Act on the Support and Rehabilitation of Juveniles, the changes introduced and new institutions dealing with the rehabilitation of juveniles. The text is an attempt to assess the adopted new solutions in the context of the maturity of juveniles, their personal and psychological development, and awareness of the acts committed by juveniles. The authors refer to the data to present the scale of juvenile delinquency both during the "old" Juvenile Justice Act of 1982 and the "new" Juvenile Justice Act of 2022. The text is a kind of discussion on the adopted solutions and their evaluation by the authors, which should encourage reflection and the readers' own reflections. The text presents statistical data referring to the specificity and scale of juvenile delinquency both during the old and the new act.

Keywords

• family
• rehabilitation
• criminal liability
• juveniles
• upbringing
• demoralization