Przestępczość wielokrotnych recydywistów i stosowana wobec nich polityka karna

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 i