Historical analysis of the issue of illegal crossings of national borders shows that the instruments of criminal law reactions are more characteristic for totalitarian countries than democratic ones. In the case of Poland, over the course of the last few decades a substantial change has taken place in the goal of protecting borders. Until the end of the 1980s, attempting to prevent its own citizens from leaving was the priority, while now the border controls are concentrated on stopping citizens from third-world countries entering. The offence stipulated in article 264 paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code penalises an act involving perpetrators illegally crossing Polish borders and do so by using specified forms of actions in the form of deceit, violence, threats or in co-operation with other people. Awareness of the perpetrator in relation to the eventual location of the border must be based on their knowledge in this field. Here it should refer to normalised patterns and the so-called good model citizen, who should possess knowledge both related to cultural norms and to certain facts (e.g. the layout of Poland’s borders). This model is well enough confirmed in the case of Polish citizens. But it is harder to apply directly to foreigners, specifically those coming from another cultural background. Due to this, determining the guilt of foreigners when it comes to committing crimes on the territory of our country relies on checking and accounting for the concrete personal facts of the perpetrator, specifically their level of familiarity with Polish legal and socio-cultural norms, while taking into consideration their education, national origin, profession, etc. A lack of appropriate awareness about the perpetrator, resulting from a lack of proper knowledge and information, would be the same as making an error about the factual or legal meaning of the act. The effect of such an error would be an inability to assign intentional fault to the perpetrator for committing the given act. From 1 July 2015, in agreement with article 28 paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code, a person who remains in justified error about the circumstances constituting the hallmarks of a criminal act, has not committed a crime at all. The authors of the article draw attention to the most commonly occurring forms of activities by perpetrators from article 264 paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code, namely the illegal crossing of borders in co-operation with other people. This co-operation must be understood as various forms of collaboration between various people while committing a crime, often fulfilling various roles in this procedure. There is little to dispute the fact that responsibility for this will be assumed by an appropriate accomplice, and therefore the agreement of several people in relation to the shared committing of a crime. To conclude, all parties must have awareness that other people will be participating in committing the crime, and articulate their will (intention) in the joint action. A lack of agreement in this sense would therefore exclude any collaboration. From a procedural point of view, for an illegal border crossing to qualify as a crime, and not a misdemeanour, the fact must be proven that the accused crossed the border ARCHIVES OF CRIMINOLOGY 383 “in co-operation with other people”. In the opinion of the article’s authors, without proof of such circumstances, one cannot talk about a crime being committed at all. Perusal of court records raises objections about how this provision is being used in practice. In none of the analysed recorded situations did border controls attempt to prove the circumstances of co-operation as a reasonable premise for accepting a group crossing the border. In some cases, the issue seems questionable. It is clear that the Polish state, in the name of its own interests, tries to ensure the flow of migrants is legal and controlled. But doubt from the article’s authors inspires making use of the instruments of criminal law to aid this goal. Punishments, which might be placed upon perpetrators of illegal border crossing crimes, do not play a role in most cases. One cannot speak about retaliation (because it is not an act which would arouse any social emotions and demand retaliation), nor speak about the resocialisation of perpetrators (since it is hard to treat the fact of crossing a border as violating fundamental social values, and moreover the perpetrator is a foreigner and it is not in the interest of the Polish state to reintroduce them to society but to expel them from the republic’s territory). Finally, it seems fruitless to argue about the preventative role of punishments, since this perfectly serves the administration’s reaction (in the form of the practice of using detention and expulsion from institutions as well as a ban from entering Poland’s territory). The position that it is not necessary to launch criminal proceedings against those people smuggled across the border was expressed in the so-called Declaration from Doha accepted in 2015, issued as a summary of the 13th UN Congress. In its verdicts, the EU Court of Justice draws attentions to how it is inappropriate to impose punishments on illegally-residing third world citizens that deprive their freedom solely on the grounds that they have stayed without a valid reason in the territory of that state, contravening orders to leave that territory in a specified timeframe. In relation to the above, it is the belief of the authors that a justified recommendation would be to withdraw from the frequently-used article 264 paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code, so that proceedings can be conducted in cases related to the illegal crossing of borders.