Poręczenie i dozór społeczny w postępowaniu karnym

Abstract

Polish penal law provides pledge and surveillance of social institutions, organizations and . collective groups under which defendant or the sentenced person: works, receives an education or is in the military service. These measures can be of a litigious or probational character. The litigious pledge is a preventive means aiming at securing the appearance of the defendant at summons before the organs conducting the proceedings and preventing his obstruction of a process. It cannot be geared on resocializing the defendant as there is a principle of presumption of the accused's innocence hold valid in the penal proceedings, as long as a perpetration of a crime is not established in the final judgement starting upon a resocialization of the defendant will be untimely. The pledge as a probational means is aimed, on the other hand, at the resocialization. The litigious pledge is applied in the course of proceedings and for its duration unless it was limited to a certain stage of a process. It is terminated, at the latest by the final completion of proceedings while the pledge as a probational means is ruled at the conditional discontinuance of proceedings, conditional suspension of the enforcement of punishment and release on licence, it is undertaken for the time of testing a favorable behavior of perpetrator of a crime. A social organization, institution or a collective body which are undertaking a pledge have to appoint a person to perform the duties of a pledger directly. Surveillance is in principle a probational means. It can be applied as the litigious means of prevention only by the way of an exception, in case of stay of execution of a judgement pertinent to an extraordinary appeal against a valid judgement or a motion for instituting a trial de novo. A difference between the pledge and surveillance is not clear. The pledge is not limited itself to standing surety for the accused or the sentenced. It is related, as in the instance of the suryeillance, to the duties to control a conduct of the pledgee. Yet, the duties of surveilling person are regulated in a wider scope and more precisely. Theoreticians are advancing a proposition that a pledge is more flexible and less binding form of control. The pledge and surveillance are terminated upon the expiration of a probation period, earlier m the case of releasing a pledger from his duties and also in the instance of a final ruling of the enforcement of punishment or recalling a release on licence. The pledge expires also upon the reopening of conditionally discontinued proceedings. The social pledge — litigious and probational — is not often used in practice and so is the social surveillance performed by the social institutions and collective groups. Surveillance by court appointed curators (mostly social ones) is dominating.