Police in the System of Public Safety — Polish Experience

Abstract

As a uniformed and armed force, whose mission it is to serve and protect both people’s safety and public order, the police have been established on the basis of the 6 April 1990 Police Act. The basic police responsibilities cover protection of health, life and property against unlawful attacks, protection of public order and safety — including assurance of peace in public places and on public transport, investigation of crime, prosecution of offenders, and finally counter-terrorist activity. In addition, police are obliged to initiate and organize activities designed to prevent crime, minor offences and criminogenic phenomena. The list of police tasks is steadily getting longer and longer and it seems that this upward trend will continue in the years to come. This makes it necessary to implement legal and organizational solutions with a view to enhancing the effectiveness of policing — on the one hand measured by a systematic search for increasingly rational procedures, and on the other one by a decreasing number of illegal activities undertaken by the criminal underworld due to their awareness of the risk of being detected and the certainty of punishment. A good way of improving police performance is to precisely determine the tasks carried out as part of preventive action as well as decisive action aimed at elimination of identified threats or their consequences.