The Blue Card procedure has been regulated in the Act of 29 July 2005 on counteracting domestic violence. Article 9d. sec. 2 of the aforementioned Act clearly defines what this measure consists of and is characterized by – it covers all activities undertaken in connection with a justified suspicion of domestic violence and carried out by representatives of:
- social welfare organizational units;
- communal commissions for solving alcohol problems;
- the police;
- education;
- health protection.
The provision of art. 9d. was introduced into the legal order by the amendment of June 10, 2010 – earlier, the manner of conducting the procedure was regulated primarily by the orders of the Police Commander-in-Chief. Since the aforementioned amendment, this has been the responsibility of the Council of Ministers, which regulates this issue in the relevant regulation (Journal of Laws of 2011, No. 209, item 1245), also indicating the templates of relevant forms. In order to show the importance and importance of this institution, one can refer to the statistics – in 2019 alone, as many as 94,716 „Blue Card – A” forms were drawn up, initiating the entire procedure (S. Spurek [in:] Counteracting domestic violence. Commentary, ed. V, Warsaw 2021, Article 9(d)).
All activities that make up the Blue Card are aimed at providing effective assistance to victims of violence in a wide range and in a long-term way, starting from standardized documentation of events consisting of simple questions, through developing an individual assistance plan for the injured person, informing them about the possibilities of obtaining support, and ending only when the violence in a given family stops and there is a reasonable assumption that it will not happen again. The victim can get psychological and legal help. It is worth mentioning here that the Blue Card procedure is initiated regardless of the victim’s consent – the legislator took into account the psychology of the victim, who often refrains from taking steps against the perpetrator (S. Spurek [in:] Countermeasures…).
The Blue Card procedure may be related to the offense of abuse as defined in Art. 207 of the Penal Code: „Whoever physically or mentally abuses the closest person or another person who is in a permanent or temporary relationship of dependence on the perpetrator, is subject to the penalty of imprisonment from 3 months to 5 years.”
It should be clearly noted that initiating the Blue Card procedure, e.g. by intervening Police officers, is not tantamount to submitting a notification of the possibility of committing a crime or instituting proceedings. Nevertheless, it may constitute important evidence in the case – the documentation, as mentioned above, is kept uniformly throughout the country and prepared with due diligence is undoubtedly of high value for law enforcement and the judiciary. As the Supreme Court stated in one of its rulings, “there is no doubt that under the procedure of the so-called Under the Blue Card, the intervening police officers formally collect the deposits of various people. It cannot be said that these are spontaneous statements or merely overheard by these officers” (Judgement of the Supreme Court of April 6, 2022, II KK 52/22, OSNK 2022, No. 5, item 17).
Peter Mendel
