Publiczne propagowanie lub pochwalanie zachowań o charakterze pedofilskim. Uwagi na tle zjawiska oraz regulacji prawnej z art. 200b Kodeksu karnego
Public propagation or approval of pedophilic behavior. Comments concerning the phenomenon and legal regulation of the Article 200b of the Penal Code

Summary/Abstract: In the Polish Penal Code of 6 June 1997, for over 10 years there has been existing a provision defining the offence of public propagation or approving of pedophilic behaviour (it is contained in Article 200b). Its introduction into the legal system was motivated, inter alia, by the need to protect society against the spread of the undesirable phenomenon of promoting the so-called positive paedophilia. The practice of the application of this provision (which is illustrated by police statistical data for the years 2010–2020) allows the conclusion that disclosed crimes of this type are rare, so it can be cautiously said that the threat of this crime is not a real social problem. The study aims to show the political and criminal motivation for the creation of the above-mentioned regulation, to discuss and critically evaluate it as well as to propose de lege ferenda modification directions within criminal law aimed at improving its quality. A detailed analysis of the provision of Article 200b of the Penal Code allows us to show its imperfections from the technical and legislative points of view. It wasn’t drafted with sufficient precision – the element of offence description ‘pedophilic behaviour’ is not clear, it is not exact enough and it causes interpretation difficulties. It is therefore necessary to propose proper amending of the current wording of Article 200b of the Penal Code or adding a new provision to the Penal Code containing a legal definition of ‘pedophilic behaviour’. The comments presented in the study show, that the current legal regulation is a source of some dilemmas still unsolved in a convincing way, important for the practice of its proper application.

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