In the late 1950s the Sigurimi had seven sections: political, censorship, public records, prison camp, two sections for counterespionage, and a foreign service. The political section's primary function was the penetration of opposition political factions. One of the counterespionage sections was specialized and had only a responsibility for eliminating underground organizations. The censorship section operated not only with the press, radio, publications, and other communications media but with cultural societies, schools, and schoolteachers. The public records section was also charged with ideological supervision of economic agencies.
Sigurimi personnel at labor camps attended to the political reeducation of the inmates and evaluated the degree to which they remained socially dangerous; camp guards were local police. The foreign service section placed its personnel as widely as possible in order to maintain contact with aliens or foreigners in the country and in diplomatic and visiting groups.
Sigurimi personnel may be conscripts called during the annual draft or may be career volunteers. Personnel are screened, and the conditions of service are made sufficiently attractive to secure as reliable and dedicated men as possible.
Frontier Guards
The Frontier Guards are organized into five battalions. Individual units are manned with fewer personnel than Sigurimi battalions, however, and the total strength of the force is lower. Although the force is organized strictly along military lines, it is under the Ministry of the Interior and is more closely associated with the security police than with the regular armed forces.
The stated mission of the Frontier Guards is to protect the State's borders and to take action against spies, criminals, smugglers, and infiltrators along the boundaries. In the process they also prevent Albanians from leaving the country.
Frontier Guards personnel, like those of the Sigurimi, may be acquired during the annual conscription. Career personnel are often those who have served tours in the regular services. A guards' school was established in 1953 in Tirana. Its students, as well as others allowed in the force, are carefully screened for political reliability.
The People's Police has five branches—the Police for Economic Objectives, Communications Police, Fire Police, Detention Police, and General Police. The Police for Economic Objectives serve as guards for state buildings, factories, construction projects, and similar enterprises. Communications Police guard bridges, railways, and wire lines. Firefighting is a police function, accomplished by the Fire Police. Detention Police are prison and camp guards. The fifth branch, the General Police, attend to traffic regulation, local crime, and other duties usually performed by local or municipal police.
General Police functions overlap those of the security police to some extent, but the force operates in the local, as opposed to the national, environment. Headquarters in the larger towns have security sections that maintain records on suspected anti-Communists, an alien section that maintains contact with Albanians outside their own districts as well as aliens, and a political commissar who is so placed as to assure the proper political orientation of all other personnel.