Zbieg przestępstw i kara łączna w polskim prawie karnym
Concurrence of Offences and Combined Punishment in Polish Criminal Law

Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to the analysis of the prerequisites of the concurrence of offences and the conditions of imposing combined punishment in Polish criminal law. Both matters are presented against the broader context of the reduction mechanisms serving the purpose of criminal liability rationalisation in cases of evaluation of many acts committed by the same perpetrator. Starting with the rule of unity, fundamental for the Polish criminal law system, according to which the same act can constitute only one offence, the institution of the concurrence of offences has been presented against a background of the following constructions specifically shaped in the Polish law: the continuous offence, the sequence of offences and the negligible concurrence of offences. In each of the above mentioned cases the multiplicity of acts committed by the same offender is the basis of evaluation, and due to the application of one of these institutions this multiplicity does not transform into the multiplicity of offences and as a result does not lead to the imposition of the combined punishment. Hence it has been demonstrated that the reduction mechanisms described above prevent the emergence of the situation of the concurrence of offences and finally the imposition of the combined punishment. They form therefore the normative foreground of these institutions which is specific for the Polish criminal law system. The text contains also the analysis of the statutory prerequisites for the imposition of the combined punishment, which in the Polish criminal law form the basis of the division of the concurrence of offences into two categories: the real concurrence in case of which the imposition of the combined punishment is possible and the concurrence of offences in case of which such a possibility does not exist. The detailed conditions of the imposition of the combined punishment have also been presented, especially the bases, known by the Polish legal system, for the imposition as a combined punishment of a punishment more severe than the individual punishments imposed for the offences which are in concurrence. As far as the second of the above mentioned categories is concerned, the author has presented the conditions of executing the multiple punishments imposed for multiple offences – as a rule they are executed sequentially.

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