Patologie tymczasowego aresztowania? Pomiędzy Kodeksem postępowania karnego a praktyką (6 Krakowskie Forum Karnistyczne, 16 czerwca 2023 roku)

Abstrakt

This report contains relation from the 1st panel, titled “Dysfunctions of pre-trial detention? Between the Code of Criminal Procedure and Practice” of the 6^th Krakow Penal Forum, held in Krakow on 16 June 2023. During the panel, the results of a survey conducted by the Polish Bar Council among a sample of more than 500 legal practitioners and trainee lawyers on their perception of the practice concerning the pre-trial detention were presented. The Referees then presented their diagnoses related to the sources of problems plaguing the system of preventive measures in Poland, including the increasing number of applications for pre-trial detention, the low number of refusals by courts to apply pre-trial detention, as well as the insufficient time for judges and defense counsels to familiarize themselves with all the evidence gathered in voluminous, multithreaded cases within 24 hours of the prosecutor’s motion to remand the suspect in custody. The Referees also discussed whether the current malfunctions, which have been detected in numerous quantitative and qualitative studies, have their origin in the flawed design of the rules governing the use of pre-trial detention or rather in the mentality prevailing in the judiciary, as well as possible remedies to these issues. A number of possible solutions were discussed, such as amending the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, reorganizing the judicial system to bring it out of its operational and organizational crisis, extending the period for deciding on pre-trial detention from 24 hours to seven days, or introducing other solutions, such as adopting the electronic tagging as a part of the system of preventive measures.