The organization of the Public Prosecutor’s Office pursuant to the Prosecutor’s Office Act in the Polish People’s Republic of 20 July 1950

Abstract

The article is an attempt to show the issue of the organization of the prosecutor’s office in the Polish People’s Republic based on the provisions of the Act on the Prosecutor’s Office of 20 July 1950. It introduced some models of the prosecutor’s office, with special attention paid to the development and the principles of the socialist prosecutor’s office in the Soviet Union, and these solutions were adopted then by the Polish legal system. The Act of 20 July 1950 rejected the rules of the organization of the capitalist prosecutor’s office, which had been in force until then, as they were considered inconsistent with the new system of government. They were replaced by the solutions on the basis of which the prosecutor’s office was separated from the Ministry of Justice and, consequently, it became an institution which was independent of all public administration bodies. Despite the fact that the regulations provided for the formal subordination of the prosecutor’s office to the Council of State, communist party dignitaries in fact decided on the direction and the activity of the prosecution system. The communists needed a fully obedient institution which they could employ to achieve their goals. Consequently, the prosecutor’s office, whose main task was to prosecute offences, became an institution of control and surveillance, which was aimed not only at individual citizens but also at organizations and offices. These duties were performed on the basis of the powers vested in it in the form of the so-called general supervision, and repressive punishment was to be a performance indicator. This Act, in spite of being quite general and laconic (it consisted of twenty-four sections, seven of which constituted transitional and final provisions), introduced all the elements necessary to implement a socialist prosecutor’s office in Poland on the basis of Lenin’s concept. The socialist model of the prosecutor’s office in Poland was in force until the social and political changes took place in 1989.