ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes developments in the area of the broadly understood privatisation of punishment and crime control in Poland concentrating on four crucial aspects of that phenomenon. The four crucial aspects are privatisation of prisons; private involvement in other modes of punishment; the phenomenon of private security companies and their role in crime control; and involvement of the voluntary sector or non-governmental organisations in the implementation of penal sanctions. Prison privatisation may involve different policies and different forms of private involvement. Apart from private prisons in the Anglo-American world and a private security sector that is blooming throughout the world, the privatisation of punishment and criminal justice is by no means something making enormous progress. In Poland the participation of the voluntary sector in the criminal justice process is regulated in the code of the implementation of penal sanctions and supported by the state.
