Controversy regarding statutory circumstances that affect judicial sentencing either in a principally aggravating or mitigating manner. Reflections against the background of the regulation of Article 53 § 2 of the Polish Criminal Code

The purpose of this article is to determine whether the circumstances referred to in Article 53 § 2 of the Criminal Code, which affect the amount of the penalty, may be seen as clearly aggravating or mitigating circumstances by way of interpretation. The undertaken analyses were based on the recognition of the code essence circumstances, referring to: committing an offence to the detriment of a person due to their age or state of health, committing an of- fence together with a minor and circumstances exposing the value of compensation by the perpetrator for the damage or compensation by the perpetrator in another form to the social sense of justice. As resulted from the analysis - irrespective of the absence of a catalogue of mitigating and penalising circumstances - some of the factors specified in Article 53 § 2 of the Criminal Code, in principle, have a clearly unidirectional character of impact, in fact af- fecting the mitigation or strengthening of the sanctions of criminal law applied. The analyses were based on the formal-dogmatic method.