POLAND—Poland recognizes stalking as a criminal offence

On 6 June 2011, Poland introduced into its legal system provisions penalizing stalking. The implementation of such provisions into the Polish penal code was preceded by an analysis initiated in 2009 by the Ministry of Justice, which indicated that almost every 10

person was a victim of persistent harassment.

The new Polish penal provisions prohibit

The first case concerns situations in which a person’s persistent harassment of another person, or their close relative, causes the victim to have reasonable grounds to fear, or otherwise significantly violates the victim’s privacy.

The specification of a new crime should be viewed positively, but since neither the notion “persistent” nor “harassment” was defined, such elements of the crime remain vague and imprecise. The same may be said with regards to the indistinct and blurred nature of the concepts “reasonable grounds to fear” and “significant violation of privacy.” Accordingly, it is important to interpret them taking into account not only subjective but also objective criteria.

Stalking, in the guise of persistent harassment, will mostly occur in such situations as the unrelenting making of phone calls or sending of unwanted e-mails, or intruding at work or at home, provided that this either causes the victim to fear or in some other way substantially infringes the victim’s privacy.

The second case concerns the situation where a person impersonates another person and uses his/her image or other personal data in order to cause personal or property damage.

Such situations will occur, for example, when using the victim’s image and contact details on the Internet, by placing false announcements regarding the victim on the Internet, by ordering goods on behalf of the victim and other actions.

In both cases, the maximum sentence is imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years. Prosecution of the aforementioned criminal offences is initiated by a motion of the injured party.

In cases where the aforementioned acts of the stalker have resulted in the victim attempting suicide, a convicted stalker is liable to imprisonment for a period between one and 10 years.

Furthermore, when sentencing a defendant convicted of stalking, the trial court possesses wide discretion to impose further limitations, such as prohibitions on the defendant frequenting particular locations or gatherings; prohibitions on them having contact with or otherwise approaching certain third parties; prohibitions on the defendant leaving a particular place of residence without prior consent of the court, or the compulsory relocation of the defendant from premises jointly occupied by the victim. Such obligations or prohibitions may be conjoined with an obligation to report to the police or another designated authority at specified intervals.

The explicit regulation of stalking as a criminal offence under Polish law will contribute to the protection of privacy and extend the scope of such protection from civil law to criminal law.