Published: 2023-07-10

The threat in a failed attempt to commit an offence

Agnieszka Liszewska
Zeszyty Prawnicze
Section: Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2023.23.2.07

Abstract

In Polish law, an unlawful act (czyn zabroniony) is a criminal offence if it gives rise to a socially unacceptable threat to a legally protected interest. Using this definition as a point of departure, this article examines the threat inherent in a failed attempt to commit a crime, i.e. an act characterized by the objective impossibility of accomplishing the crime. I start with the assumption that the threat inherent in any and every attempt to commit an offence should be associated with the commission of the offence rather than with the infringement of a legally protected interest, while the censure attached to the act as such and its negative evaluation, which provides the grounds for its culpability and penalisation, is independent of whether an effect has actually been achieved, but at the same time calls for the examination of the perpetrator’s intent. Hence, I conclude that the threat inherent in a failed attempt to commit an offence may be determined by an external observer who conducts an objective assessment of the perpetrator’s conduct from an ex ante perspective on the basis of what the perpetrator knew, and reaches a conclusion that this conduct contains the features characteristic of an unlawful act.

Keywords:

threat; , failed attempt to commit an offence; , criminalization.

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Citation rules

Liszewska, A. (2023). The threat in a failed attempt to commit an offence. Zeszyty Prawnicze, 23(2), 141–162. https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2023.23.2.07

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