ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three explanations for the stall in the current reform effort: the general popularity of the " war on crime" in Poland, which is the immediate or proximate cause of stalled reform; the frustration of criminological theory under Communism; and Poland's culture and history of repression. Poland is far from democracy, but people are experiencing " survival of the fittest" capitalism. The penal practice continues to contradict the ideology of the Executive Code, which proclaims resocialization a primary goal. The Executive Code is the Law on Prison Service drafts reality it regulates most of the vital matters concerning prison officers. Russian influence in Poland after World War II was strong enough to impose throughout the 1950s the Russian scientific theory of crime. Prison as symbolic Bastille has been associated with depravity and evil of the old regime, so there was a strong demand for the quick changes in the incarceration rate and in the penal regime.
