This increase in work caused the establishment of a great number of new Special Courts, the enlargement of existing Special Courts and the formation of new Special Court sections.
I
This development is commented upon as follows:
1. Sentences by the Special Court in the first years after its establishment had a strongly intimidating effect. Prompt and severe punishment by the Special Court was dreaded. Moreover it was considered particularly shameful to have been sentenced by the Special Court. Since the focus of the entire system of criminal justice shifted in the meantime from the ordinary courts (local courts, criminal sections of district courts) to the Special Courts, a certain watering down of the original conception of the Special Courts could not be entirely avoided. Today the Special Courts basically are to be considered merely as special divisions of the criminal courts, their verdicts no longer having that full intimidating effect they had before. The only essential difference from ordinary criminal jurisdiction is left in the fact that there is no legal appeal remedy against verdicts of Special Courts. The standing of Special Courts suffered from their having to deal with comparatively small offenses such as small scale illegal slaughtering, unauthorized fishing by a Pole, and the like.
2. The concentration of jurisdiction in political and other most important criminal cases led at first to an essentially homogenous and coherent jurisdiction. The establishment of new chambers in the Special Courts and the increase of these courts tends to endanger this homogenousness. Since the verdicts of Special Courts were not regularly but rather casually published in the press, and since equalizing measures were taken only recently, the jurisdiction of the Special Courts, even of the individual chambers of one Special Court, developed partly in a very different manner. The first chamber of one Special Court, for instance, is reported to have punished the theft of some items from a collection of textiles as the deed of a people’s enemy with 4 years of penitentiary, while the second chamber of the same Special Court in a very similar case imposed a sentence of only 8 months.
3. The strong increase of the number of Special Courts had brought about that, due to the scarcity of apt candidates, the selection of judges officiating in these courts could no longer be carried through as carefully as it was done in the first years. While, in principle, only professionally and in particular politically highly qualified judges were supposed to work in Special Courts, the increase of positions made it necessary to draft judges frequently from criminal courts and civil sections who hardly were up to the required standards. Quite a number of judges in the Special Court are not even members of the Party.
4. Due to the development of the Special Courts, the ordinary criminal courts, especially the criminal court sections, have undergone an extreme decline in importance. While Special Courts are overburdened with work, some criminal court sections have hardly as much to do as they had in peacetime. Furthermore, the latter now having only to deal with trifling transgressions, they are gradually becoming less familiar with severe cases. It is reported that the prosecution now shows a tendency to bring many cases before the Special Courts which actually do not belong to their jurisdiction. On the one hand this is due to the prosecutors having greater confidence in the Special Courts, on the other to the fact that thus a delay of the execution of the sentence through appeal is made impossible.
5. The permanent overburdening of the Special Courts had led in some districts to a gradual vanishing of their particular advantage, their rapid sentencing. The Special Courts are said to proceed with such delay that at times the prison term imposed by the court is already absorbed by the custody preceding trial.
II
It may be stressed that said development of the Special Court jurisdiction is undesirable. In the interest of a rapid and severe punishment of the really outstanding crimes and transgressions it should be attempted to maintain the character of the Special Courts as “Courts Martial of the Home Front” [Standgerichte der Inneren Front].