Courts may hand down punishments of eleven different varieties. In addition to fines, confiscation of property, and confinement, they may sentence a guilty person to corrective labor or compulsory residence without confinement. They may deprive an individual of the right to occupy certain governmental or public positions, of the right to practice certain professions or activities, of the right to residence in a specified place, or of the right to earn decorations and awards. If he is on duty with the military, a court may remove his rank. It may also administer a public reprimand, alone or in combination with another type of punishment. The sentence, however, should be within the upper and lower limits in the amounts of fines or the time period for which the other sentences may apply. Such limits are set down in the code.

The death penalty is never a mandatory sentence in peacetime. It is optional for a considerable number of crimes, but it is handed down only if the circumstances of a particular crime that is before the court are exceptionally serious. When the maximum sentence is deprivation of freedom and does not include a possible death sentence, the duration of the sentence will be no longer than fifteen years. If the maximum sentence can be death, twenty years deprivation of freedom may be substituted for execution.

The stipulated sentences for crimes against the state tend to be more severe than sentences for crimes against individuals. Theft of public property is punishable by confinement of up to eight years, of private property by no more than three years. Robbery involving public property may result in a sentence of from three to ten years; if it involves private property, the range is from three to eight years.

Although the individual's rights appear to have more than ample safeguards, the situation may be less utopian than the wording of the criminal code would suggest. For example, a 1973 amendment to the laws pertaining to personal property states that "when a citizen is found to possess more property than he could reasonably have acquired from his regular income, he is considered to have acquired it illegally unless he can prove to the contrary."

Courts

All of the formal judicial machinery of the country is within the governmental organization under the Ministry of Justice, but special courts—such as those of the military establishment—may be administered separately and independently in their lower echelons. Although the ministry serves as a part of the executive branch of the government, as the interpreter of laws it can check upon their compatibility with the constitution and other legislation. It might also function as a check upon the powers of the legislature and upon the other ministries in the executive branch. So far as is known, however, during the framing of legislation its professional expertise is used only to provide technical advice on the phrasing or structure of the text, to make sure that it says in legal terms what the framers intend (see ch. 8).

The Ministry of Justice is responsive to the policies of the BKP, although the minister appears to be chosen for his professional qualifications. In the early 1970s the incumbent was one of the very few important officials in the government who did not also have a high-ranking party position, and only one of his immediate staff was a member of the Central Committee of the BKP. None of the others is believed to have had an equivalent party status.

Each people's council has a legal department or a group that provides it with legal counsel. The chiefs of such departments at obshtina level are appointed and relieved by the okrug people's council.

The size and legal qualifications of the legal staff vary with the population of the okrug or obshtina. The departments at okrug level and those of the larger obshtini have staffs that are relied upon for competence in a wide range of criminal and administrative procedures; the legal problems that are encountered by a remote rural obshtina are usually minor.

Legal departments are charged with monitoring the activities of the people's councils and their committees to keep them consistent with the law; with interpreting laws for the people's councils and for inhabitants in the area of their jurisdiction; with strengthening the contractual and financial disciplines of the people's councils and of enterprises within their areas; and, as a by-product, with tightening the safeguards on public property. Most of the daily work of the departments consists of giving legal counsel to the people's councils and of reviewing the councils' resolutions to ensure that they conform to national laws and party policies.