Media content and penal populism and its social impact (illustrated with the example of the case of "Polish Fritzl")

On November 5th, 2009, the Polish Parliament passed an amendment to the Penal Code, introducing a new preventive measure against pedophilia perpetrators, commonly known as chemical castration. The amended Article 95a, section 1a of the Penal Code concerns, among others, a mandatory referral of the perpetrator of rape of a minor under the age of 15 to outpatient treatment or placement in a closed institution, where they will undergo pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment aimed at reducing sex drive. The amendment has been widely criticized by professionals; doctors, sexologists, and criminologists, who underlined ineffectiveness and possible adverse health consequences of the so-called chemical castration, not to mention how its mandatory nature violates the basic rights of the individual. Nevertheless, this law has an extremely large popular support: according to a Millward Brown SMG / KRC survey lab, 79% of Poles approved of the amendment. It is also worth noting that the fi rst announcement of the introduction of the above-mentioned Act took place on September 9th, 2008, and thus on the same day on which the media revealed the so-called Polish Fritzl case, whose perpetrator, Krzysztof B. is currently held imprisoned for sexual abuse of his daughter.The topic of this paper is to answer whether and to what extent the introduction of the so-called ‚chemical castration act’ was infl uenced by the phenomenon of penal populism, and what the role played by media was in this process. It is a research attempt to determine how the Polish media report the allegations of pedophilia crimes and whether the manner of reporting could have infl uenced the public opinion about this kind of crimes and the political decisions about the employed ways of combating it.