Poland

How hate crime data is collected

Several public bodies are involved in monitoring and/or collecting data on hate crimes. The main actors in this field are the police and the Prosecutor's Office. Each has a separate recording system and methodology for this task. Since 2015, the police and the Ministry of the Interior and Administration have jointly developed and shared a hate crime data collection system.

All offences committed against people because of their racial, national, ethnic or religious background are classified as hate crimes. While there are no general guidelines on hate crime recording, police officers are required to establish whether the perpetrator was acting out of bias motivation. Bias indicators such as behaviour and statements during the act, circumstances of the crime and characteristics and circumstances connected with the victim are used to determine the motive.

Hate crimes are flagged on the incident form as well as in the police force's electronic database.

Special co-ordinators at both the central (the National Hate Crime Co-ordinator in the Criminal Bureau of the General Police Headquarters) and local levels (police headquarters in every Voivodeship and the Metropolitan Police Headquarters) are responsible for preventing and investigating hate crimes, as well as for compiling data from their district and reporting them monthly to the National Police Information System (KSIP). Monthly reports are forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior and Administration. The same structure is also used to monitor hate speech incidents, which are crimes under the Polish Penal Code. However, these can be separated in the reporting. Data from the police are available on request.

Prosecutors record hate crimes when bias motivations are identified in the proceedings or are implicit in the crime. Guidelines on conducting proceedings for hate crimes cases, issued by the prosecutor general in 2014, unify practices for the prosecution and reporting of hate crimes. Every prosecuted hate crime should be reported to a superior Prosecutor's Office. The cases are also monitored by the Department of Preparatory Proceedings of the National Public Prosecutor's Office, which issues a report on all cases to the Prosecutor General and provides recommendations to subordinate Prosecutor's Offices. The National Public Prosecutor's Office publishes data on hate crime online every six months. Published data contain excerpts from reports on investigations conducted in the organizational units of the prosecutor in a given period of time.

The Division of Statistical Management Information in the Department of Strategy and European Funds of the Ministry of Justice is responsible for organizing, co-ordinating, supervising and preparing statistical reports, including information on hate crimes. The data are obtained from two sources: statistical reports prepared by courts every six months, and the electronic database of the National Criminal Register. The data are published online.

Besides collating the reports from police and receiving information on judicial outcomes from the courts, the Ministry of the Interior and Administration also conducts its own independent monitoring activities.