- 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.
Read on....
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