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Volume III · Page 505
| to be handed over. I shall inform the Fuehrer
of this through Reichsleiter Bormann.¹ 3. Administration of justice by the people — This is to be carried out step by step as soon as possible, first of all in the villages and the small towns of up to about 20,000 inhabitants. It is difficult to carry it out in large towns. I shall rouse the Party particularly to cooperate in this scheme by an article in the "Hoheitstraeger." It is evident that jurisdiction must not be permitted to lie in the hands of the Party. 4. Decrees concerning the police and the administration of justice will in future be published after having been coordinated, for example, in cases where unmarried mothers attempting to procure abortion are not prosecuted. 5. The Reich Leader SS agrees that the cancellation of sentence, even for members of the police, will remain with the Reich Minister of Justice as laid down in article 8 of the law relating to the cancellation of sentence. 6. The Reich Leader SS has given full consent to the ruling I have planned on corporal punishment ordered by the Fuehrer. 7. I refer to the law concerning asocial elements and give notification of the claims of the administration of justice, e.g., in the classification of juveniles as asocial elements and their direction. It likewise seems to me that the actual circumstances which serve to classify a person as asocial are not laid down in the law with sufficient clarity. The Reich Leader SS is awaiting our opinion and will desist from submission of the law until then. [Handwritten] One thing is clear — the reduction of the age of discretion has been tentatively submitted to, and approved by the competent agencies. 8. The Reich Leader SS has agreed to a clause for the Juvenile Court Law, whereby the age of discretion can be reduced to 12 years and the age of limited discretion can be extended to over 18 years. 9. SS Lieutenant Colonel Bender, on the staff of the Reich Leader SS, is appointed by the Reich Leader SS as liaison officer for matters which apparently necessitate direct liaison with the Reich Leader SS. He can be contacted at any time by teleprinter at the field headquarters of the Reich Leader SS, and will also come to Berlin once every month to report to me. SS Captain Wanniger is appointed liaison officer for other matters; he is stationed at the Reich Security Main Office. [Handwritten] Kuemmerlein² 10. The Reich Leader SS points out that in the administration |
¹ Thierack wrote a letter to Bormann on this subject on 13 October 1942, ,entitled "Administration of Criminal Justice against Poles, Russians, Jews, and Gypsies." (See Doc. NG-558, Pros. Ex, 143 reproduced in section V D 2.)
² Kuemmerlein was Thierack's adjutant.
