Area Handbook for Romania Part 24

Measures taken to combat crime have had varying degrees of success.

Speculation is illegal, but efforts to prevent private sales of new and used cars at excessive profit have been ineffective. Cars two to five years old sell for more than their original cost. Crimes such as vagrancy, begging, and prost.i.tution were, as of late 1970, defying the best efforts of the militia and the courts. This type of crime had been prevalent during the early post-World War II period but declined after about 1950. During the late 1960s it again began to increase. The militia has also encountered a problem in the amount of popular cooperation it is able to count upon. Individuals who have identified persons as having committed criminal acts have been subjected to reprisals. The militia has, however, been able to show good results against vandalism, pilfering, and petty theft. By mid-1971 crimes of that category had been reduced to pre-1969 levels.

The 1968 Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact) invasion of Czechoslovakia generated a certain amount of disillusion that probably contributed to the increase, during the late 1960s, in attempts to emigrate illegally. An emigre reported that about 40 percent of the prison populations at Arad and Timisoara, or some 500 inmates, had failed in attempts to cross the border into Hungary. Most of them were reportedly twenty to thirty years old and were serving sentences of from one to five years.

Modern crime-fighting facilities have been introduced more slowly than has been the case in the more prosperous European countries. During 1970 the Ministry of Justice established the Central Crime Laboratory and two branch, or interdistrict, laboratories. All of them serve the militia, the security and armed forces, the courts, and the public prosecutors.

They are equipped to a.s.sist in the investigation of all aspects of crimes except those where medical and legal services are required. They include facilities for handwriting, fingerprint, and ballistic a.n.a.lyses and a.n.a.lysis of doc.u.ments (for counterfeiting or alteration) and for performing a number of other physical and chemical tests.

Traffic Control

Traffic control demands a sizable portion of police energies, although by 1972 highway use remained low in comparison to the rest of the continent. There had been few motor vehicles before World War II, and numbers for personal use or for motor transport increased slowly during the immediate postwar years. Since about 1955, however, both categories have become available at an accelerated rate.

In 1963 traffic was up over 200 percent (and in 1965 approximately 300 percent) from 1955 levels. Total numbers of vehicles increased at about 10 percent a year during the late 1960s, and the number of those that were privately licensed doubled during the two-year period 1968 and 1969. Encouraged by the government during approximately the same period, tourist traffic tripled.

Irresponsible driving, lack of traffic controls, and lack of concern for their danger on the part of pedestrians, bicyclists, and wagon drivers contributed to an acceleration in the number of accidents and casualties that paralleled the increase in traffic. In 1969 there were 2,070 deaths resulting from about 5,300 reported accidents. Only about 40 percent of the victims were occupants of the vehicles involved and, of them, a considerably larger number of pa.s.sengers than drivers were killed.

Nearly 50 percent of the total fatalities were pedestrians; the remainder were on bicycles or wagons.

Considering accident statistics higher than warranted by the rising volume of traffic, the regime had enacted a series of stricter control measures, the bulk of them in 1968. Officials a.n.a.lyzing the problem attributed most of the poor record to disregard for driving regulations and inadequate traffic controls. Excessive speed had accounted for about 40 percent of the accidents. Driving under the influence of alcohol, failure to pay attention, and failure to yield the right of way accounted, in that order, for most of the others. Drivers were blamed for about 65 percent of accidents, pedestrians for 31 percent, and malfunction of vehicles for 4 percent. Accidents in which alcohol was a factor tended to be the most serious. One in every 2.3 alcohol-related accidents resulted in a fatality.

After 1968 the more stringent regulations and measures to enforce them began to yield results. By 1970, although both the numbers of local automobiles and tourist traffic had continued to increase steadily, accidents had decreased by 8 percent; and deaths and injuries from them were down by 7 and 8 percent, respectively. Officials gave credit to an educational program in secondary schools, the beginnings of a vehicle inspection program, and positive actions taken to reduce driving after drinking, as well as to the new regulations and enforcement efforts.

During 1970 the militia suspended about 20,000 operators' licenses, canceling a number of them.

Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure

The penal code in effect before 1968 was one of the most severe in Europe. The penal code and the code of criminal procedure that have replaced it attempt to ensure that criminals are not able to evade the penalties provided for in the law but, at the same time, there is a stated guarantee against the arrest, trial, or conviction of innocent persons. Protective measures for accused persons are to be respected by all law enforcement and judicial agencies.

It is emphasized that an individual is found guilty according to the relevant evidence in his case. Courts are instructed to base sentences on the crime, rather than on an individual's reputation or extenuating circ.u.mstances. A Romanian a.s.sumes legal responsibility and is subject to the codes at age fourteen; he is considered an adult before the courts at age sixteen.

If the possible sentence for an alleged crime is five years or more, the accused is guaranteed counsel during any part of the investigation that involves his presence after he has been taken into custody, in the preparation of his defense, and throughout his trial. Minors and enlisted military personnel are authorized counsel without regard to the possible sentence. The defense counsel has access to all findings that are uncovered by the prosecutor or other investigators during the investigation of the case. Except in special cases specified in the law, trials are public. Decisions as to guilt or innocence and the sentence handed down are concurred in by a majority vote of the judges and people's a.s.sessors on the court.

The maximum prison sentence for a first offense is twenty years; for a repeated serious offense, it may be twenty-five years. The death sentence is also authorized, but it may be commuted to life imprisonment. The most severe sentences are still authorized for crimes in the political category--those endangering the state, the regime, or the society. Serious crimes against property and crimes of violence against a person are also considered grave but, unless they are exceptional, are not punishable by death. A person receiving the death penalty has five days in which to request a pardon. If the sentence is carried out, execution is by a firing squad.

The new codes attempt to reduce court time spent on minor offenses.

Those that const.i.tute no significant danger to society and should be prevented from recurring by social pressures have been removed from the list of crimes and have been relegated to the judicial commissions. In other cases, where an act is still cla.s.sified as a crime, an offender may elect to plead guilty without a trial. If he does, he is charged one-half the minimum fine for the offense, and the case is closed.

Pretrial preventive detention is authorized to protect the individual, to a.s.sure that he will not elude trial, or to prevent his committing further criminal acts. Detention is ordinarily limited to five days for investigation of a crime or to thirty days if the person has been arrested and is awaiting trial. Extensions up to ninety days are authorized if requested by the prosecutor in the case. Longer extensions may be granted by the court.

According to the Romanian press, which has commented on the way that the new codes have served the people, examples of poor performance are usually attributable to the inertia of the bureaucracy. When citizens'

rights are withheld, red tape or over-worked personnel are most frequently to blame. Occasionally, however, officials are unresponsive to individuals' requests and provide services grudgingly without an adequate justification for delay.

Courts

The Const.i.tution charges the judiciary with the defense of socialist order and the rights of citizens in the spirit of respect for the law.

It also gives the courts responsibility for correcting and educating citizens who appear before them, to prevent further violations of the law. Party leader Nicolae Ceausescu, in a 1970 p.r.o.nouncement, indicated that the party leadership may feel that the law should stress to an even greater extent the defense of the state and society rather than the rights of the individual. According to his statement, the first obligation of the courts is to collaborate with the militia and security forces and apply lawful punishment to those who disregard order and the laws of the country. He went on to say that he considered that the concepts of "solicitude for man" and "extenuating circ.u.mstances" were poorly understood and were abused by overlenient courts. In his view the courts had not shown sufficient firmness in cases involving trivial infractions, such as rowdiness or minor infractions of the norms of social relationships, or in cases dealing with persons who wish to live without working (see ch. 8).

Nonetheless, the court organization, as it was redesigned in 1968, is required to operate within a framework that is compatible with the penal codes and is thoroughly described and established in the law. Of greater significance, there has been an effort to make sure that the system is run by adequately qualified personnel. People's a.s.sessors, who need have no legal education, may outnumber the judges on the lower courts.

Decisions of these courts may, however, be appealed and, if higher court panels are not made up exclusively of professional judges, the judges always outnumber the people's a.s.sessors. Judges must be lawyers and are preferably doctors of law.

The court system under the Ministry of Justice consists of the Supreme Court, _judet_ courts, and lower courts. The lower courts, which might be considered lower munic.i.p.al courts, are usually referred to only as "the courts." Bucharest has a court that is an equivalent of a _judet_ court, and it has several of the lower courts (see ch. 8).

The lower courts are courts of first instance in all cases they hear.

This could include cases that had previously been heard by judicial commissions. Such cases would not be considered to have been legally tried and would require reinvestigation and altogether new prosecutions, making sure that rights of the accused and all legal procedures were properly observed.

Appeals from the lower courts are heard by _judet_ courts, which are also courts of first instance in more serious cases. Final appeal is to the Supreme Court. There is no appeal from its decisions, but it is not totally free and independent. It is within one of the government's ministries and is also responsive to the party leadership.

Judicial commissions function at a level below the formal court system.

Each such commission is composed of several members (usually five), handles a wide variety of cases, and attempts to hear as many of them as possible in public. Because the judicial commissions are not a part of the court system, their cases are not included among criminal statistics. Unless appealed, however, their sentences are binding.

Official doc.u.ments describe the commissions as public organs for exerting influence and legal control, organized so as to bring about broad partic.i.p.ation of the ma.s.ses, providing them with a socialist education in legality and promoting a correct att.i.tude toward work and good social behavior. The educational benefits are intended both for those serving on the commissions and for those who are judged by them.

The commissions handle small damage or personal disagreement suits between individuals--small first offense cases involving public property, petty thefts, misuse of property when no willful abuse is involved, negligence cases, and traffic violations. Judicial commissions set up in enterprises or collectives handle minor labor disputes and work-grievance cases. In all situations the commissions attempt to exert the influence of public opinion and, in personal disputes, to achieve reconciliations.

Penal Inst.i.tutions

Depending upon the seriousness of a crime, its category, and the age and occupation of the individual, until the mid-1960s a convicted person was confined in a correction camp, a labor colony, a prison or, if subject to military law, a military disciplinary unit. Prisons included penitentiaries, prison factories, town jails, and detention facilities of the security troops.

A majority of labor colony inmates were political prisoners and, if there were a few of them that had not completed their sentences or were not released in amnesties by the mid-1960s, they were probably transferred to penitentiaries. Increased use of judicial commissions for petty crimes and an accompanying change minimizing confinement in lesser cases have further reduced prison populations and eliminated the need for separate categories of correction inst.i.tutions. As a result, the 1970 law on the execution of court sentences treats all places of confinement as prisons or penitentiaries (under the authority of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) or as military disciplinary units (under the Ministry of the Armed Forces).

Place of detention vary, nonetheless. Maximum security prisons are provided for those convicted of crimes against the state's security, serious economic crimes, homicides or other violent crimes, and recidivists. All convicted persons are obliged to perform useful work, and an effort must be made to educate and rehabilitate the inmates.

Consequently, all but town jails and those facilities designed to hold persons for short stays have labor and educational facilities.

A convict is paid according to the country's standard wage scales. He receives 10 percent of his wages; the remainder goes to the penitentiary administration as state income. The maximum working day is twelve hours.

If work norms are regularly exceeded, sentences are shortened accordingly.

Inmates are segregated for various reasons. Women are separated from men; minors, from adults; and recidivists and those convicted of serious crimes, from those serving short terms. Drug addicts and alcoholics are isolated whenever possible. Persons held in preventive arrest, not yet convicted of a crime, are separated when possible from convicted persons. Unless their conduct is considered intolerably uncooperative, they are not denied the ordinary prison privileges.

Usual convict privileges include some visits, packages, and correspondence. Privileges allowed vary with the severity of the original sentence and may be increased, reduced, or done away with altogether, depending upon the inmate's att.i.tude and behavior.

Consistently good conduct may also earn parole. An inmate who performs an exceptional service may be pardoned altogether; many were freed for their work in combating the great floods during the spring of 1970.

Other disciplinary measures include reprimand, simple isolation, severe isolation, or transfer to an inst.i.tution with a more severe regimen.

All convict mail is censored, and correspondence whose content is considered unsuitable is withheld. Conversation during visits is limited to Romanian or to a language familiar to someone available to monitor what is said.

Amnesties are granted periodically. Some, such as those that freed political prisoners in 1964 and the one in late 1970, reduce prison populations considerably. They may, as in 1964, free a particular category of prisoner or, as in the December 30, 1970, amnesty, serve to reduce sentences of all types but on a basis of the amount of the term unserved. At that time full pardon was granted all who had less than a year of their sentences to serve, even if an individual had been sentenced but had not yet begun to serve the term. Full pardon was also granted to pregnant women, women with children under five years of age who had up to three years of their sentences remaining, and to all women over the age of sixty. The amnesty even applied to cases in court.

Trials were to continue, but the amnesty would take effect if it were applicable to the sentence. If, however, an amnestied person committed another crime within three years, he would be confined for the unserved portion of his commuted sentence in addition to the new one.

CHAPTER 13

ARMED FORCES

In 1971 Romania was a member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact), but it was not fully cooperating in its activities nor in total agreement with the Soviet Union's interpretation of the organization's mission. Romania saw little threat to its territorial boundaries or to its ideology from the West. On the other hand, since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by other pact members, various Romanian leaders have expressed concern about the danger to individual sovereignty from within the pact itself.

Much of the nation's military history has been that of an alliance partner. It has not fought a major battle in any other capacity. How well it has fared at peace tables has depended in large part on the fate of its allies or how the peacemakers believed that the Balkan area of the continent should be divided. In this tradition Romania aligns itself without significant reservation with the Warsaw Pact.