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suspected lawbreakers, however, the Criminal Police use the Bertillon system, which includes a 10-finger procedure of fingerprinting. They keep complete files on all suspects and convicts.
Travel both within and outside the country has increased, especially since the introduction of visa-free regulations with Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the increased travel of West Berliners to East Berlin and to the rest of East Germany. East German officials have expressed some concern over these increased flows, but there are no indications that security considerations would lead to curtailment of this travel. The government has, however, imposed currency restrictions for Polish citizens to prevent them from buying out East German consumer goods. The regime controls the travel of foreigners; special permission is required to enter certain areas, including the frontier zones and the uranium mining area in the Erzgebirge. Some administrative measures have been taken to curtail contacts with West Germans. Special passes are required to enter some factories. Police permission is also necessary for meetings and public collection of funds, and clubs and social organizations are required to have licenses issued by the police. Radio and TV receivers must be licensed by postal authorities.
Contacts with the West are closely regulated. Letters and printed material originating in West Germany or West Berlin, and to a lesser extent in other Western countries, are censored or excluded. The number, size, and content of parcels received by individuals are monitored and subject to control. The regime discourages viewing and listening to television and radio broadcasts from the Federal Republic and Western Europe, but controls have been largely ineffective. Attempts at jamming radio broadcasts have generally been ineffective, except for the occasional difficulties created for broadcasts by the US Government-managed Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) from West Berlin.
The police system, with the backing of the East German military forces, appears capable of dealing with any popular disturbance short of a spontaneous uprising of nationwide proportions. Buttressing the system of pervasive police controls is the legal system which is modeled closely after that of the Soviet Union, and functions as an instrument to perpetuate Communist rule. The maintenance of an impartial, comprehensive system of criminal and civil jurisprudence has been of less concern. Accordingly, the legal system reflects little either of the traditional German or the present-day West German system.
By Western standards, the penal code is harsh and arbitrary, clearly weighted in favor of the prosecution, normally the state authority. The severe principles operative in the state's early years were summarized by the Minister of Justice:
- The announcement of sentence is the goal of the criminal proceeding. It must in this connection be emphasized once again with all clarity that the task of defending our state against all threats and disturbances of our order continues to be the crucial task. Therefore, we must understand that we dare not allow either softness or weakness in relation to the enemies of our order, and that hard sentences are also correct sentences.
By 1963, however, the regime shifted ground slightly in order to reflect changes which had been introduced in the Soviet Union the year before. A new decree stressed reliance on persuasion and education in judicial proceedings, and increased collective responsibility for apprehending, prosecuting, and reforming offenders. A new penal code was adopted in January 1968, and while considered a judicial model in Eastern Europe, it continues to emphasize the political aspects of justice in a Socialist state.
The new code is primarily designed to reinforce the unchallenged authority of the state and is tailored to meet the security needs of the regime. Under the code, many criminal offenses carry relatively light sentences as compared with penalties meted out by West German courts for similar crimes. On the other hand, crimes against the state, regardless of how trivial, are subject to harsh judicial decisions, some carrying the death sentence. Execution is by firing squad.
The Prison Administration, subordinate to the Ministry of Interior's HVDVP, controls several hundred prions, ranging from county jails to large penitentiaries and labor camps. In addition, the Ministry for State Security controls two security prisons, at Bautzen and Waldheim, where major political prisoners are incarcerated. Nearly all prisons, as well as the labor camps, employ the inmates as laborers; in some cases the prisoners are used in outside work detachments as well as within the prison itself.
Information on the exact size of the prison population is not available, but it has been estimated that as many as 6,000 persons may be in custody for political offenses. Since 1964 East Germany has concluded several "ransom" agreements, whereby it has released approximately 3,600 political prisoners in return for payment by the Federal republic of DM10,000 per prisoner. In October 1972 Honecker proclaimed a broad amnesty for several thousand persons convicted of minor crimes. This number included some West Germans. The amnesty was intended to demonstrate the internal stability of the GDR and to aid West German Chancellor Brandt's reelection campaign.
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