Abstract

In spite of implementing in December 1951 in Polish People’s Republic the principle of collective adjudication with the participation of the social factor, the procedure of writ-of-pay- ment proceedings provided for the handling of petty offences without the participation of the de- fendant. The boards established at that time were adjudicating at the trial, while criminal orders were issued by the chairman of the board single-handedly. The basis for issuing a penal order was the information contained in the motions for punishment, which, given the fact that the law enforcement agencies did not carefully prepare these motions, led to the mechanical punishment of the defendants without examining the actual circumstances of the case. In the 1950s, writ-of- payment proceedings were used to a large extent to prevent the statute of limitations on adjudica- tion in cases which were not referred to the hearing before the board on time. It was common practice to issue penal orders in cases which, due to their gravity, should have been decided at the trial. After the problem of selection of motions for punishment under the order procedure had been resolved at the beginning of the 1960s, only minor offences were dealt with. Along with the gradual tightening of the repressive nature of Polish law on offences in the 1970s and 1980s, the significance of the writ-of-payment procedure decreased due to the possibility of imposing only small fines by way of a criminal injunction. The assumptions of the criminal policy adopted by the communist authorities in cases of misdemeanour were based on severe punishments imposed in order to combat the political opposition and intimidate the society.