Report of the Human Rights Defender on the activities of the National Preventive Mechanism in Poland in 2013 inmates, the difference: 6786 inmates) shows that at the end of 2013 the Prison Service could resign from placing inmates in additional places of accommodation and the occupancy rate would not exceed the capacity of penitentiary units. While the decrease in the number of inmates in penitentiary units at the end of 2013 was significant, the problem of the so-called ‘queues to prisons’ remains unsolved. As stated in the Report of the HRD on the activity of the NPM in 2012 (hereinafter: Report from 2012)35, Poland will be under the obligation to admit Polish citizens sentenced to imprisonment in the EU countries to Polish prisons (approximately 12,000 people). However, the number of persons convicted with a valid sentence of imprisonment, who failed to show up to serve their sentence, despite the set date of its beginning, is a much greater problem for the future occupancy rate of penitentiary units. According to the statistics of the Central Board of Prison Service, the number of such persons amounted to 35,335 in December 2013. The data of the Ministry of Justice included in the rationale to the draft Act amending the Act – Penal Code and certain other acts of 10 December 201336 (hereinafter: draft from 10 December 2013), prepared by the Criminal Law Codification Commission, show that almost 50% of inmates in prisons are there as a result of the order issued to execute the earlier suspended penalty of imprisonment and approximately 70,000 people are waiting, for various reasons, to serve their sentence of imprisonment. The latter figure comprises 69,376 inmates recorded in the statistics of district courts and 2,112 inmates in the statistics of regional courts. The further part of the rationale says that the difference in the number of persons waiting to serve their sentence results from the fact that the Prison Service does not have information about the inmates whose documentation was not delivered from the court to prison due to i.a. postponement of penalty (9,987 in district courts), convicts hiding out (4,076 in district courts), arrest warrants issued (21,624 in district courts) and “other reasons”, e.g. due to exceeding of formal time-limits by courts. For the last five years, the number of convicted persons waiting to serve their sentence fluctuates around 70,000 which demonstrates the scale of outstanding sentences of imprisonment to be served.37 The said situation violates one of the fundamental functions of the penal law, namely its repressive function. This function involves not only the necessity to clearly define the penal sanction for the committed crime, or the necessity of individual and general prevention achieved by means of reaction to a crime under the penal law, but first of all the inevitability of penalty for the committed crime. Report from 2012, p. 27. http://legislacja.rcl.gov.pl/lista/2/projekt/194900/katalog/194909 37 Detailed data for the years 2000-2012, see: rationale for the draft of 10 December 2013, p. 119. 35 36 26