Anomalies in the Activities of Camp Courts

Abstract

The camp courts have been an important element of the Soviet justice system. The purpose of the paper is to identify the main anomalies in the activities of camp courts. The work is based on unpublished documents stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), the Joint State Archive of the Chelyabinsk Region (OGACHO). The Department for Camp Courts (UDLS) of the Ministry of Justice of the USSR did not rate the activities of camp courts highly. The main complaints considered massive violations of the norms of substantive and procedural law, lack of generalization of judicial practice, poor organization of trials.In the early 1950s against the backdrop of increasing formal performance of the camp courts, the UDLS criticism became softer. However, it was not possible to maintain these indicators for a long period. Therefore, UDLS returned to the practice of identifying anomalies in the activities of camp courts and continued to criticize them harshly. The quality of investigative work carried out by the Prosecutor's office and the first departments of places of detention was low. Various conflicts and shifting of responsibility were observed in the camp justice bodies. The courts blamed the Prosecutor's offices and the first departments for the low performance of their work, and the latter reciprocated. As a result, the country's leadership concluded that it was necessary to eliminate camp courts as they failed to cope with the task of prompt consideration of cases.The identified anomalies can be explained by the harsh conditions of the camp courts. Their employees worked in an environment of high secrecy, could not exchange experience in periodicals. Regional and the All-Union meetings of workers of camp courts were quite rare. There was an acute shortage of legal literature.