Assessing the capacity of substantive criminal law to capture serial homicide in the legal qualification of the act

This paper examines the extent to which current substantive criminal law instruments can adequately capture the criminological phenomenon of serial homicide in legal qualification. The author aims to establish a definition of seriality among homicide offenders and poses two key research questions: do legal concepts such as continuous acts, series of offences, and recidivism provide a suitable representation of the complex nature of serial homicide, and how does criminology, as an auxiliary science of criminal law, encounter this phenomenon? Employing a formal-dogmatic approach alongside analysis of the literature and case law, the author critically assesses whether the Polish Criminal Code can fully encompass the complexities of serial homicide.