The monograph begins with a review of international standards of juvenile justice. According to the authors of the publication, Katarzyna Wiśniewska and Marcin Wolny, “international law instruments underscore that juvenile justice proceedings are of an extraordinary nature because of their subjects and the key underlying value, namely the best interests of a minor. Regrettably, despite the fact that standards of juvenile justice have been clearly expressed in so many international instruments, they are still to be fully embedded in both domestic legislative process and the legal practice of national authorities”.
The publication also includes a report by Dr Wojciech Jasiński and Artur Pietryka, “Procedural Fairness in Juvenile Justice in the Light of Case File Research”. The report was based on the review of files in 105 juvenile cases pending before seven district courts. The purpose of the research was to comprehensively analyse the mainstream of the juvenile justice system. According to Dr Wojciech Jasiński, “One may criticise the current measures provided under the Juvenile Justice Act because they result in courts hearing cases which should never end up in a court in the first place. By its very nature, a judicial proceeding should be considered only a last resort. It would be far better to solve problems such as enforcing the compulsory education requirement within the minor’s own environment.” Artur Pietryka adds: “The tendency to involve courts in resolving such issues seems to be a sign of helplessness and inability to solve them in the environments concerned, especially schools. We must also be aware that the court is not an institution that may effectively solve problems connected with minors being exposed to a risk of committing an offence or demonstrating anti-social behaviour. If people who have regular contact with minors remain uninvolved, even the best prepared family courts will fail to perform at an expected level. The report reveals that not a single proceeding under review involved mediation. This means that no alternative forms of dispute resolution have been used in the area of juvenile justice.”
The publication also featured papers presented by the speakers and participants in the academic seminar organised on 8 October 2013 in Warsaw at the headquarters of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. The seminar was mostly devoted to the amendment to the Juvenile Justice Act that entered into force in January 2014. Michał Szwast noted that “the change in the model of juvenile justice proceedings, which consisted in substituting the criminal-law procedural model with the civil-law model, raises doubts regarding the fairness of the new legal framework. Here, one can indicate two key defects: above all, criminal procedure no longer applies in cases involving minors’ criminal liability for punishable acts such as criminal or tax offences, which means that certain significant principles of criminal procedure will no longer be applicable in such proceedings. The above concerns, most notably, the presumption of innocence, but also such principles as the obligation to ascertain the substantive truth in a case. As a rule, the criminal process provides more guarantees for the parties than its civil counterpart.”
