Punishment and State-Building in Post-Soviet Georgia

Gavin Slade

In his masterful account of prison reform in England during the Industrial Revolution, Michael Ignatieff observes that to study such a subject is not merely to study penal institutions and the practices of discipline and domination within them, but to also study the “moral boundaries of social authority” in a society undergoing rapid transformation. At that time, the reform of prisons was “a response, not merely to crime, but to the whole social crisis of a period, and part of a larger strategy of political, social and legal reform designed to re-establish order on a new foundation” (Ignatieff 1981 210). This statement nicely summarizes the approach this chapter takes to studying the role that punishment played in state-building in one post-Soviet state, Georgia—a country coming out of, yet still within, profound social crisis.

Heathershaw J. & Schatz E. (eds). 2017. Paradox of Power: The Logics of State Weakness in