Domestic violence committed by women in the family - or the family as an object of protection in the criminal law of Poland

The article is devoted to the problems of understanding the legal issues of the family in the criminal law of Poland and in criminology. The paper analyzes the issues of the content of the definition of the family. It is necessary to refer to its legal definition. It is concluded that although the concept of family is repeatedly found in the Polish legal system, it is not uniform and has different content for certain areas of law. The article presents a scientific analysis of one of the categories of crimes against the family, i. e. the so-called domestic violence. There is no legal definition of the domestic violence in the Polish legal system, although it is assumed to be a social phenomenon that occurs when a family member or other person living together or managing a household deliberately tries to dominate another family member, physically or mentally. Thus it is possible to talk about domestic violence as a violence occurring among people living in the same household. Its subcategory is the so-called violence in family occurring in the family environment. The paper presents and analyzes examples of domestic violence and police statistics. Some of these behaviours can be classified as crime against the family. Thus it is possible to specify, that, on the one hand, the victims of domestic violence are more likely to be women and, on the other hand, that women are far less likely than men to be suspected of domestic violence. However presently every eighth victim of violence in family is a man. Within the framework of the presented article, it is proposed to turn attention to the problem of women as perpetrators of domestic violence, especially in relation to a man. It is necessary to emphasize that domestic violence perpetrated by women against men, including their husbands, is a growing phenomenon.