Abstract

The article discusses one of the best known regulations of the Polish Penal Code, namely the provisions of Art. 200 § 1, in accordance with which “Whoever engages in a sexual intercourse with a minor under 15 years of age or commits any other sexual act or leads such an individual to undergo such an act or to perform such an act shall be liable to imprisonment from 2 to 12 years”. The findings made in this article pertain to the practice of Polish courts in the context of the discussed provision, and more specifically, an observed leniency towards perpetrators of acts prohibited under Art. 200 § 1 of the Penal Code, with the objective being to attempt to answer the question what is the source of this tendency (the author presents several possibilities in this regard). The findings included in this study were based on the results of the investigation of records carried out as part of a research project of the Justice Institute entitled “Perpetrators of offences against sexual freedom and decency of a minor: a criminological analysis” (Warsaw 2017).