Crime has been near the top of Georgia's political agenda for a decade. But successive governments have still to address fundamental questions of legitimacy and trust.
Europe's politics of migration control are being exported to Georgia with potentially dangerous results, says Gavin Slade.
Behind Georgia's prison-abuse scandal lies a large-scale, self-funding penal system whose effects - not least psychological - pervade the society, says Gavin Slade.
The exposure of violent abuse in the Georgian prison system has shocked its people and rocked the government of Mikheil Saakashvili. The intense focus on zero-tolerance and mass incarceration in the criminal-justice system is a key to understanding why it happened, says Gavin Slade.
The economic recession in Russia has not produced the expected rise in organised crime. The answer to this conundrum lies in the politics of security reform, says Gavin Slade.
A prominent feature of Georgian life both before and after the Soviet period has been the influence of a powerful criminal network, the “thieves-in-law”. Its rise and endurance is closely linked to the changing character of the Georgian state, says Gavin Slade.
