Dealing with Juvenile Offenders in the Criminal Justice System

The treatment of juveniles within the criminal justice systems is a matter of great variety in the 11 European countries studied comparatively. The study focuses on the age of criminal responsibility, ways to divert juvenile offenders from the criminal justice system or avoid criminal justice responses to them, juvenile proceedings and special reactions and sanctions. In spite of different approaches there is a common trend towards preventing juvenile offenders from being treated by criminal courts and being sentenced to criminal sanctions.     

Genetic data on 19 STR loci in south-east Poland

Allele frequencies for the 19 STRs loci, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179, D13S317, D16S539, D18S51, D21S11, CSF1PO, F13A01, F13B, FESFPS, FGA, LPL, Penta D, Penta E, TH01, TPOX and VWA were obtained from a sample of 203-1188 unrelated individuals living in the area of south-east Poland.     

The Baltic miracle? The economic crisis and its consequences for young people in the labor market of the Baltic states, 2007–2017

ABSTRACT

The financial crisis (2008–2009) resulted in significant deterioration of the youth labor market in the Baltic states. In 2017, however, the Baltic states were among the countries with the highest employment-to-population ratio in Europe (the ‘Baltic Miracle’). This article shows that the observed progress is mostly due to the demographic changes in the three countries. Isolating the demographic effect demonstrated that it played crucial role in mitigating the negative effects of the crisis, especially in Latvia and Lithuania. The results of the study show that in 2017 only in Estonia had the youth labor market returned to its precrisis conditions.     

The difficult relationship between nationalism and built heritage: the case of late nineteenth-century Krakow

This paper examines the debates that surrounded the renovation of the royal castle in Krakow during the last decade before World War I. When the Galician crownland took over the castle in 1905, it bore little resemblance to a royal seat, having been used as military barracks since 1846. The debate that followed focused on what should be preserved, what demolished, and what recreated. In this discourse the “meaning” of a historical monument was examined and different interpretations within the circles of architects, preservationists, and artists were propagated. The debate conducted during the meeting of the Central Commission for Research and Conservation of Historic Buildings revealed that the division was not along national lines, but rather among different philosophies of preservation of built heritage. The point made by the paper is that the discourse conducted 100 years ago allows us today to draw conclusions about the role of historical buildings in a national(istic) worldview and examine its inherent contradictions. That is because, I argue, the past as such matters little in the national(istic) understanding, despite its ostentatious interest in history. What matters is the usefulness of historic symbols in the present.     

Negotiated Case-ending Settlements: Ways of Speeding up the (Court) Process

The subject of this article is a special type of fast-tracked case-ending decisions called “negotiated case-ending settlements”. Those proceedings are based on a kind of agreement between the parties, end with a real conviction of the offender and their legal consequence is a true but mitigated punishment. They can be found in six of 11 countries studied, namely, in England & Wales, Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland and Spain. The English guilty plea procedures, the French appearance before a court after prior admission of guilt and the Polish prosecutor’s application for a conviction to be rendered without a trial as well as the voluntary submission to penalty are examined more closely here. The comparative study focuses on the stage, where the negotiation is made, the conditions for the use of these settlements and the PPS’s role therein.     

Collecting Digital Evidence from Online Sources: Deficiencies in Current Polish Criminal Law

Criminal Law Forum - The importance of digital evidence, especially online content, is continuously increasing due to the proliferation of digital technologies in socio-economic life. However, the...     

The Public Hearing and Law-Making Procedures

This article examines the institution of the public hearing in contemporary constitutional systems. After considering the public hearing in light of the concept of deliberative democracy, the authors present various normative and practical measures implemented in selected countries. It is claimed that public deliberation affects the quality of legislation and makes it more legitimate. The public hearing as a stage in the legislative procedure requires a mature reciprocal dialogue between individuals and the state authorities as well as a readiness to reach appropriate decisions. The authors argue that to make the public hearing more effective, the law-maker or its organs should have a duty to inform the opinion about the extent to which the public proposals have been taken into account.     

Validation of nine non-CODIS STR loci for forensic use in a population from Central Poland

The D7S1517, D3S1744, D12S391, D2S1360, D6S474, D8S1132, D5S2500, D10S2325 and D4S236613 are STR loci potentially useful for forensic purposes whose analysis has recently become facilitated by availability of a commercial kit. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the usefulness of these loci for forensic identification in a population of Central Poland. The distribution of alleles of the nine STRs was determined in sample of 353 unrelated individuals born in Central Poland and indices of forensic informativeness were calculated. The studied loci were highly informative and did not show departures from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. For the loci located on the same chromosomes (D2S1360, D3S1744 D4S2366, D5S2500, D7S1517, D8S1132, D12S391) as other loci commonly used for identification purposes (TPOX, D2S1338, D3S1358, FGA, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179 and D12S391) appropriate pairwise analysis of linkage disequilibrium was performed. In all cases no statistically significant deviation from independence was found. We conclude that the studied STRs are informative and, when necessary, can be used to extend the results obtained with other STRs commonly analyzed for identification purposes, in particular the CODIS set.