Abstract
Poland is located in Central Europe, has an area of about 312,000 km2, a population of over 38 million, and is the sixth biggest Member State in the European Union. Following a lengthy period of communist rule, Poland became a parliamentary democracy in 1989, with a market economy, and observing the principle of the rule of law. Poland has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1991; of the NATO since 1997, and of the EU since May, 2004.
Poland’s capital city is Warsaw; population of more than 1.6 million. The country level of urbanisation is modest, and the urban population amounts to 61%. Poland is, ethnically and religiously, a unitary country: 96% of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics and while the rest are ethnic minorities, such as Germans, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Czechs, and Slovaks.
The Polish economy is fast growing, with an average GDP growth rate of more than 4.0% in the last decade (and 6.5% in 2007). The unemployment rate decreased from a high level of over 20.0% in 2003 to 10.5% in 2008. Since Poland’s accession to the European Union, more than one million people, most of them young, have migrated to work in other Member States, particularly in UK.
In Poland the survey has been carried out by the Institute of Justice. The research team consists of: Andrzej Siemaszko, Beata Gruszczyn´ska, Marek Marczewski, Katarzyna Drapała, Roman Kulma, Jacek Czaban´ski and Paweł Ostaszewski, who managed the Polish database. The Polish part of ISRD-2 was co-financed by the European Commission’s Daphne Program “The International Self-Report Study on Violent Behaviour, Attitudes and Victimisation among Youth” (JLS/DAP/2005–1/063/YC 30 –CE-0060386/00–18) and the Institute of Justice.
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Notes
- 1.
The last stage was drawing classes with the Survey Manager software. 173 classes were drawn. The register of schools included the following types of secondary schools: public schools (run by local governments), schools founded by social/community organizations of different types, private schools. Secondary schools attended by less than 20 students, as well as those specialised (for mentally or physically handicapped persons) have been excluded.
- 2.
The questionnaires were translated into Polish by Andrzej Siemaszko and Michał Jankowski. In addition to the translation, the Student Questionnaire was adjusted by using language easily understood by youth.
- 3.
The response rate in schools was 77.4% (from among 62 drawn schools 48 participated) and the response rate in classes was 78% (135 out of 173 drawn classes). The majority of refusing schools did not substantiate the refusals. Some schools gave as a ground their participation in other surveys or the necessity to obtain consent of the Ministry of National Education.
- 4.
16 questionnaires were rejected at the national level due to facetious and unrealistic answers. An additional eight questionnaires were excluded, after merging database on the international level (due to the same reasons).
- 5.
Families where parental roles were fulfilled by a stepmother or father’s partner and/or stepfather or mother’s partner were also included in the figures for full families.
- 6.
The above results appear to be overestimated. According to the annual statistical report for 2005, 47.4% families owned a car, 38.6% owned a computer, and 65.2% owned a mobile phone.
- 7.
Overall rate includes all offences listed in Table 20.1.
- 8.
Further analysis showed, however, that these bizarre and counter-intuitive tendencies were the “responsibility” of two small towns near the German border, in which drug use was, in fact, unexpectedly common. In the remaining small towns, however, drug consumption was at the expected relatively low level.
- 9.
The rates reported in the Sects. 20.5.4 and 20.5.5 are based on n = 2,122.
- 10.
It should be added, however, that in the majority of countries, alcohol consumption, drug use and truancy (obviously at a certain level) are in themselves “juvenile delinquency”, and as such may form the basis of their responsibility. The demarcation line between dependent and independent variables is therefore exceptionally unclear in this case. This inconsistency is obvious in the ISRD project: soft drug use was treated as risk factor whereas hard drug use was considered criminal behaviour.
- 11.
In spite of this, however, the correlation between two risk factors and criminality in general is fairly weak, although it is stronger in the case of each risk factor separately.
- 12.
The rates reported in the Sects. 20.6.5 and 20.6.6 are based on n = 2,122.
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Czabański, J., Gruszczynńska, B., Marczewski, M., Siemaszko, A. (2010). Poland. In: Junger-Tas, J., Marshall, I., Enzmann, D., Killias, M., Steketee, M., Gruszczynska, B. (eds) Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-95982-5_20
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