Description

Why do some organized crime groups succumb to state attack while others survive, adapt and continue on? Since 2005, Georgia created and implemented the most hard hitting anti-mafia policy in the post-Soviet space, targeting in particular bosses known as vory-v-zakone or thieves-in-law. It has been undoubtedly successful in reducing the influence of these figures but, as part of wider ‘zero tolerance’
criminal justice policy, the social costs have been large. The talk will explore why the anti-organized crime policy was successful in Georgia by investigating the vulnerabilities of the mafia itself and the combinations of international best practice and local worst practice in attacking the mob. In this vein, the talk looks at how the anti-mafia policy has affected penal practices and the ways in which this became a topic of electoral contestation in the run up to the October 2012 election culminating in the political defeat of those who had led the attack on crime in the first place.

Gavin Slade is Assistant Professor of Criminology, based at the Centre for Criminology and Socio Legal Studies, University of Toronto. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Reorganizing Crime: Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia Oxford: Oxford University Press (Due out in December 2013)