This study is the result of many years of permanent observation of the broadly understood area of security and the area of penitentiary science that is strictly connected with it. Due to the complexity of the undertaken considerations, the author of the study decided to emphasise a certain space, which is of an extremely significant value for utilitarian reasons. However, the issue in question has never been fully described in literature. The conducted research and the data obtained as a result indicate unequivocally that there is a need to examine the management of security systems in penitentiary institutions in Poland by a thorough analysis of its individual components.
This article is devoted to the determinants of preparing and deploying Intervention Groups of the Prison Service. The period of several years in which the Intervention Groups of the Prison Service functioned have highlighted the need to implement solutions that enable their better preparation and more effective use in ensuring public security. In the structures of the Prison Service, the mobile strike groups have existed for a relatively short time, which consequently translates into a low level of experience of the staff that manage them. In practice, it appears that individual Regional Inspectorates of the Prison Service use different ways of managing their subordinate Intervention Groups. It is therefore necessary to introduce changes with regard to the preparation and use of all Intervention Groups of the Prison Service, which will enable their proper functioning and increase their effectiveness.
The aim of the research was to analyse letters written by prisoners so as to discover what the penitentiary space means to them. The practical goal was to show the usefulness of employing epistolography in assessing the quality of social and living conditions and to evaluate the quality of penitentiary practices in the context of prisoners’ needs, as well as to unmask the hidden re-education programme. The article is based on the results of the content analysis of 26 anonymised letters written by prisoners who for the first time serve a sentence in Polish closed regime prisons. The collected research material was subjected to a framework analysis supplemented by an emergent technique. The analysis of prison letters indicates a generally critical assessment of the quality of the practices carried out and their accuracy in relation to the prisoner’s rehabilitation needs. The letters reveal also the existence of a hidden re-education programme. The use of the epistolary corpus in the description of the penitentiary space may result in the improvement of the current penitentiary methods. A thorough analysis of prison letters indicate areas that require change or the application of specific solutions that may contribute to the rationalization of penitentiary practices.
This article presents the rights of Prison Service officers regarding the preventive use of direct coercive measures. The concepts of the use and application of direct coercive measures were defined in relation to the Prison Service. The purposes of preventive use are presented with examples. The catalogue and basic principles of the use of direct coercive measures, which can be applied as preventive measures in the Polish Prison Service, are described. The above issues were adapted to the statutory protective tasks of this formation.