Northern (N): Soviet Union (NS). Legal Affairs: Report on Visit to Peoples' Court to Hear Traffic Offence Being Tried

A file of correspondence and reports concerning justice in the Soviet Union. The documents discuss a fall in the crime rate in the Soviet Union by ten percent during 1963; and a number of measures introduced by the Soviet government to improve the efficiency of the Soviet justice system, including an attempt to involve lawyers "more closely in the practical and theoretical problems of Soviet society". The documents also include a report produced by a member of staff at the British embassy concerning the trial of a man accused of "a traffic offence of medium seriousness". The report suggests that the trial was a "meticulous bureaucratic process intent on arriving at the truth"; that the judge, unlike British magistrates, had considerable legal training; and that the sentence passed at the trial was "somewhat harsh".