Poglądy na kryminalizację
Views on criminalization

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine the processes of criminalization and the various factors that generate criminogenic phenomena and sustain this process over time. The article discusses the overarching structural elements that give rise to crime. The text also presents factors related to the actual and perceived experience of crime in society, as well as deficits in legitimacy resulting from the state’s apparent inability to reduce fear of crime or demonstrate adequate concern for combating it. The authors also examine the triggering events that actually lead to the enactment of specific legislation. To guide the study, the following research problem was formulated: How are social facts, in this case laws, defining crime created? In what ways do structural and cultural conditions form a context in which triggering events can emerge and ultimately play a significant role in the various processes leading to criminalization? In line with the research problem, the authors formulated a hypothesis suggesting that changes in structural conditions provide an impetus for the creation of laws targeting social groups perceived as “requiring control” by actors with the capacity to stimulate, define, and institutionalize criminal law. The study also addresses human rights in the context of the analysis, as well as decriminalization, understood as the repeal of anachronistic legislation and changes in enforcement practices and legal compliance. The research includes an analysis of the historical background and previous studies on criminalization processes, as well as general models of criminalization developed by other scholars, and its forms as institutionalization, globalization, and modernization. To complete the analysis, the findings from the literature on political studies were also used, particularly those focusing on the development of policy domains and social processes operating at various levels of social organization to generate public policy, influence its implementation, and shape laws defining crime.

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