CURRENT PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE SENTENCING AND ENFORCEMENT RESTRICTION OF LIBERTY PENALTY

As a result of the changes to the criminal codifications introduced in 2015, the penalty of restriction of liberty has become one of the basic criminal sanctions applied by Polish courts. At times, nearly 30 per cent of those tried were sentenced to it annually. As the tasks of a probation officer include organising and controlling the execution of the penalty of restriction of liberty, therefore the signalled change affected the type and scope of their tasks. During this time, the demand for places where convicts could perform community service increased very seriously, as the impact of the number of hours to be performed for community service increased from 16.2 million to 35.3 million to the probation teams between 2015 and 2023. The system in place until now was not prepared for such significant changes and therefore, due to the increasing massification of this punishment, the work performed by convicts is sometimes of a sham nature. There has also been a decline in the completion of this type of punishment through actual execution. While 42.4 per cent of community service hours ended in this way in 2015, only 30.7 per cent will end in 2023. The reasons for this situation are complex, as highlighted in this article. In order to improve these figures, it would certainly be worthy of consideration to introduce solutions motivating convicts to systematically carry out the sentence of restriction of liberty and to increase the flexibility of this punishment.