Reorganizing Crime Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia

  • Looks at the phenomenon in Georgia of 'Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian), career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity originating in the 1930s from Soviet prison camps
  • Poses questions surrounding criminal resilience to state attacks on organized crime and explores why the Georgian thieves-in-law had particularly weak resilience
  • Based on extensive fieldwork and utilizing unique access to primary sources of data such as police files, court cases, archives and expert interviews collected over a two year period
Arising from Soviet prison camps in the 1930s, career criminals known as 'thieves-in-law' exist in one form or another throughout post-Soviet countries and have evolved into major transnational organized criminal networks since the dissolution of the USSR. Intriguingly, this criminal fraternity established a particular stronghold in the republic of Georgia where, by the 1990s, they had formed a mafia network of criminal associations that attempted to monopolize protection in both legal and illegal sectors of the economy. This saturation was to such an extent that thieves-in-law appeared to offer an alternative, and just as powerful, system of governance to the state.

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