Topic: Prison Reform
Country: Poland
Delegate Name: Allison Endres
School: Forest Hills Eastern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Poland position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
Before Poland’s fall from communism in 1989, the Polish penal system was modeled predominantly after the Soviet Union. This allowed correctional facilities to become corrupted and brutality to find its place inside the walls of the prisons. Forced labor from the inmates, which went uncompensated, combined with horrific living conditions became a major source of anger and resentment for the inmates.
After the fall of communism, Poland’s Parliament passed an amnesty law that released hundreds of political prisoners but continued to confine recidivists. Finally in 1990 Pawel Moczydiowski, director of the Central Prison Administration, succeeded in stopping the violence and political corruption in Poland. By removing and replacing many of the corrupted officers and administrators, and opening the structures of prisons allowing for more contact with the outside world, Poland’s penal systems started to make a change in the living situations of their inmates.
However, the living conditions of the inmates were less than adequate; each person had less than three-square meters of space and some facilities had to convert their space devoted to recreation and medical facilities into cells. This overcrowding came with outbreaks of hepatitis B and C, along with tuberculosis. Many buildings used for prisons were built before WWI and where they would be condemned in other democratic nations, were still in use in Poland.
Within the past 10 years Poland has been working to make the issues stemming from prison overcrowding top priority. Polish administrators have taken on this problem with a level of resolve that should be used as a benchmark by other countries. Reformers have used the idea of “power by the people”, to reshape the many institutions of the criminal justice system. By holding international meetings in Poland’s capital of Warsaw, Poland has taken steps to share their prison reform adjustments to help further the status of the worlds convicted.
Poland has taken action by expanding the capacity of prisons from 69,300 to78,907. Unfortunately, there are still 84,549 inmates and not enough room in the facilities to hold them. By building more prisons or expanding and repairing existing ones, Poland and other nations can relieve their prisons of the scourge of overcrowding and poor health of the inmates.
