Popular Punitiveness? Punishment and Attitudes to Law in Post-Soviet Georgia

Abstract

Georgia is the only country in the post-Soviet region where incarceration rates significantly grew in the 2000s. In 2013, the prison population was halved through a mass amnesty. Did this punitiveness and its sudden relaxation after 2012 impact attitudes to the law? We find that these attitudes remained negative regardless of levels of punitiveness. Furthermore, the outcomes of sentencing may be less important than procedures leading to sentencing. Procedural justice during both punitiveness and liberalisation was not assured. This may explain the persistence of negative attitudes to law. The Georgian case shows that politically-driven punitive turns or mass amnesties are unlikely to solve the problem of legal nihilism in the region.

How gun control policies evolve: Gun culture, ‘gunscapes’ and political contingency in post-Soviet Georgia

“…24 Two of these innovations-tightening gun ownership rules while expanding concealed carry-seem contradictory. A common interpretation is that stricter regulations respond to public discontent over a mass amnesty of prisoners carried out in 2012, which was followed by crime rises; see Slade and Kupatadze (2017). 25 In contrast, expanding 'concealed carry' may reflect the subculture of GD politicians, many of whom were prominent in the 1990s.…”

Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality: The case of small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan

“…Put simply, by deviating from its own rules and governing practices, the state undermines its own legitimacy. Recent studies in the post-Soviet region argue that this is related to the selective enforcement of laws (Brooke and Gans-Morse, 2016), and the way the criminal justice system operates and interacts with people (Hendley, 2015) Likewise, in their study of attitudes towards law in post-Soviet Georgia, Slade and Kupatadze (2017) argue that procedural injustice encountered by individuals in their interactions with criminal justice representatives have led to a low level of legitimacy of the law and state. In their study of public health programmes implemented in Russia, Brooke and Gans-Morse (2016) argue that individuals reacted to the ways in which laws were actually implemented, noting whether the state itself sent signals that a particular law was going to be enforced, or whether it would be a mere formality.…”

“…The legitimation of illegality becomes stronger when state representatives themselves fail to comply with state regulations (Beetham, 1991; Mathiesen, 1965; Slade and Kupatadze, 2017; Tyler, 2004). Corruption and informal protection of drug producers and traffickers by law enforcement officers are the main reasons why drug markets flourish in many countries (Watt and Zepeda, 2012; Westermeyer, 2004: 128).…”

“…In her understanding, shared by many in the village, the police are making money off hashish-makers—first, by charging bribes for release, and then by selling on confiscated hashish. Such practices of ‘performing’ the law suggest that local officers have lowered the legitimacy of the police and of the law in general rather than demarcating the line between legality and illegality 10 (Heyman, 1999) and (Dewey, 2012; Slade and Kupatadze, 2017).…”

“…Their strategy was to arrive in unmarked cars and civilian clothes so that people would not be able to identify them as police from afar. However, these strategies contributed to a questioning and loss of legitimacy among the people (Beetham, 1991; Slade and Kupatadze, 2017). In the summer of 2006, a few local hashish-makers refused to be ‘arrested’ by police officers.…”