Operation of Retraining Minor Offences into Misdemeanours in the People’s Poland

Abstract

In the period of the People’s Poland (1944–1989), ruled by the communists, Poland was in the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. The Act on the Transfer of Certain Minor Offences as Offences to Criminal-Administrative Jurisdiction, passed in 1966, gave the status of a misdemeanour to a large group of existing offences against property and acts detrimental to consumer interests. The purpose of transferring these offences as misdemeanours to the jurisdiction of penal-administrative colleges was to relieve the courts of the burden of dealing with cases of minor offences. The transfer operation was accompanied by the introduction of a number of solutions in the field of criminal law, which created conditions for a more flexible criminal policy in cases of misdemeanours. The Transfer Act was fully incorporated into the Code of Misdemeanours adopted in 1971, the specific part of which includes another group of misdemeanours resulting from the transformation of existing offences. The Transfer Act finally placed the law on misdemeanours in the area of criminal law in its broadest sense, which resulted in a departure from the concept of the misdemeanours law, developed during the Stalinist period, as one of the branches of administrative law.

Keywords

• cases of minor offences
• misdemeanours law
• the transfer act
• the people’s poland