Social Policy in the Provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and Crime Prevention (General Issues)

Abstract

Social policy plays an important role in crime prevention. Social policy includes such detailed policies as: housing policy, social security policy, employment policy, family policy, cultural policy, environmental protection policy, the policy for the prevention and fight against social pathologies. These policies enable an individual to satisfy its material or non-material needs, for example: housing; in the field of health protection, education, culture, leisure; social activity, job satisfaction, social recognition, feeling of safety. In their entirety, they constitute a whole mosaic of everyday problems of an individual, and fairly often a lack of the possibility to solve them, in accordance with the existing law, is the underlying cause of criminal behaviour. Social policy, which aims to meet the needs of the society, as well as for the development and progress of the society, plays an important role in the process of neutralizing social conflicts which can result, among others, in crime. For these reasons, in the fight against crime, we cannot restrict to a narrowly-defined crime prevention, i.e. criminal-legal prevention, which is realised in the process of imposing punishment and serving it but we should base on the broad understanding of the concept, i.e. consider sociopolitical aspects of preventive activities undertaken in this area.

The legal norms largely define directions, goals and ways of realisation of social policy in Poland. In this area, also when it comes to crime prevention, provisions of Constitution of the Republic of Poland play fundamental role because: 1) firstly, they include a series of normative statements defining the general framework of activity of public authorities in the area of social policy; 2) secondly, they constitute the legal basis for activities undertaken by public authorities in the course of realising social policy, and which may act solely on the basis and within the law; the Constitution of the Republic of Poland either itself contains  provisions that constitute the legal basis of activities for those bodies in the field of social policy or defines the form of normative acts in which the standards can be established; 3)thirdly, the superior nature of the Polish Constitution in the system of sources of law in Poland and the universally binding character of its provisions results not only in the ban on breaking the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, but also in the obligation for all subjects in the country to realize them.