Criminal policy on offences against women’s sexual liberty in Poland. A post-Foucauldian and institutional-legal analysis
Criminal policy on offences against women’s sexual liberty in Poland. A post-Foucauldian and institutional-legal analysis

Summary/Abstract: The research problem addressed in the text concerns the state’s criminal policy on offences against women’s sexual liberty in Poland, examined from both the post-Foucauldian and an institutional-legal perspective. The analysis focuses on the offence of rape, with particular attention to the amendments introduced by the Act of 28 June 2024 amending the Criminal Code and certain other acts, concerning the redefinition of the indicia of the prohibited act set out in Article 197 of the Criminal Code. The main purpose of the analysis is to characterise the criminal policy on sexual offences, with particular emphasis on legal solutions concerning rape, together with their doctrinal practice of interpretation, from the post-Foucauldian and institutional-legal perspective. The text presents the following research questions: (1) How can the legal solutions altering the scope of the definition of the offence of rape in Polish criminal law following the 2024 amendment be assessed from the post-Foucauldian perspective?, (2) How can the legal solutions altering the scope of the definition of the offence of rape in Polish criminal law following the 2024 amendment be assessed from the institutional-legal perspective? The scope and purpose of the analysis thus defined determine the individual sections of the text, which are: (1) a description of the study’s normative assumptions, including a presentation of such categories as: the ‘apparatus’, the ‘apparatus of sexuality’ and sexual autonomy, (2) the characterisation of the structure of the offence, chiefly with regard to the new elements introduced in 2024, as well as the relationship between the categories of violence and resistance in the offence of rape.

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