Reorganizing Crime

Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia

Bibliographic Data

ID19944227
AuthorsGavin Slade (0000-0002-3279-8892, corresponding author)
Year2021
Publication date2021-12-31
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueReorganizing Crime (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherAcademic Studies Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1515/9781644699614
OpenAlexW585125677
ISBN9781644699614
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian) are career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity that began in the 1930s in the Soviet prison camps. For reasons that the book attempts to explain, thieves-in-law became exceptionally prevalent in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Here, by the 1990s, they formed a mafia network-criminal associations that attempt to monopolize protection in legal and illegal sectors of the economy. At this time, the mafia was in many ways more powerful than the state. In 2005, however, anti-organized crime policy was transferred from Italy and America to Georgia. Legislation targeting the thieves-in-law directly was successful in causing a steep decline in mafia influence and organized criminal activity. This book asks how and why this occurred. In particular, why did the thieves-in-law not resist the attack on them successfully? Based on extensive fieldwork and utilizing unique access to primary sources of data, such as police files, court cases, archives, and expert interviews, the book provides a case study of varying organized criminal resilience to state attack. It studies the dynamics of changing mafia activities, recruitment practices, and organization as these relate to changes in the socio-economic environment and, in particular, anti-organized crime policy in what is the first sustained, directed anti-mafia policy implemented in a post-Soviet country

Criminology · Nobility · Organised crime · Political science · Prison · Sociology · Soul · State (computer science) · Theology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies · Law

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Open DOIOpen Access