Sex offenders registration, public notification, and civil commitment. Implementation in Poland

Filip Szumski

Both sex offenders registration and public notification (SORN) and sex offenders civil commitment (CC) have  high level of support within the community and moderate level of support among professionals. This is despite the lack of empirical evidence of their effectiveness. In Poland, CC was introduced by the Act of November 22, 2013 and SORN by the Act of May 13, 2016. Both solutions were clearly inspired by solutions from the United States. During the lecture: (1) I will describe the Polish version of SORN and CC. (2) I will present the history of the introduction of SORN and CC in Poland, including a description of the actions of professionals who tried to influence the legislative process to stop or mitigate the negative effects of these solutions. Based on this, I will try to answer the question: what can professionals around the world do to mitigate the effects of harmful sex offender legislation? (3) I will analyze the operation of the criminal justice system from the perspective of general system theory in order to explain the reasons for the introduction of SORN and CC, the reasons for maintaining the functioning of these solutions, and the possible influence of professionals on the functioning of SORN and CC.

Filip Szumski, Phd is a psychologist with specialization in psychosexology and a lawyer. He is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan where he is the head of the Criminological and Forensic Psychology specialization. Dr. Szumski is a member of the bord of International Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders (IATSO) and Polish Sexological Society (PTS). He is a president of the PTS’ Forensic Sexology Section and deputy editor of Journal of Sexual and Mental Health. His research interests focuses on sexual violence and the impact of the legal context on the professional functioning of psychologists. In 2018 he received Scholarship of the Minister of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young scientists. He is an European Commission expert, expert witness in the field of sexual offending and trained systemic therapist.