ted to
reprisals. The militia has, however, been able to show good results
against vandalism, pilfering, and petty theft. By mid-1971 crimes of
that category had been reduced to pre-1969 levels.

The 1968 Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact) invasion of
Czechoslovakia generated a certain amount of disillusion that probably
contributed to the increase, during the late 1960s, in attempts to
emigrate illegally. An emigre reported that about 40 percent of the
prison populations at Arad and Timisoara, or some 500 inmates, had
failed in attempts to cross the border into Hungary. Most of them were
reportedly twenty to thirty years old and were serving sentences of from
one to five years.

Modern crime-fighting facilities have been introduced more slowly than
has been the case in the more prosperous European countries. During 1970
the Ministry of Justice established the Central Crime Laboratory and two
branch, or interdistrict, laboratories. All of them serve the militia,
the security and armed forces, the courts, and the public prosecutors.
They are equipped to assist in the investigation of all aspects of
crimes except those where medical and legal services are required. They
include facilities for handwriting, fingerprint, and ballistic analyses
and analysis of documents (for counterfeiting or alteration) and for
performing a number of other physical and chemical tests.

Traffic Control

Traffic control demands a sizable portion of police energies, although
by 1972 highway use remained low in comparison to the rest of the
continent. There had been few motor vehicles before World War II, and
numbers for personal use or for motor transport increased slowly during
the immediate postwar years. Since about 1955, however, both categories
have become available at an accelerated rate.

In 1963 traffic was up over 200 percent (and in 1965 approximately 300
percent) from 1955 levels. Total numbers of vehicles increased at about
10 percent a year during the late 1960s, and the number of those that
were privately licensed doubled during the two-year period 1968 and
1969. Encouraged by the government during approximately the same period,
tourist traffic tripled.

Irresponsible driving, lack of traffic controls, and lack of concern for
their danger on the part of pedestrians, bicyclists, and wagon drivers
contributed to an acceleration in the number of accidents and casualties
that paralleled the increase in traffic. In 1969