“Criminalizing” Georgian Schooling: Crime as a Mode

of Governance since the Rose RevolutionGavin Slade

University of Oxford

gavin.slade@law.ox.ac.uk

Zero Tolerance: Justice for All

• Mandatory custodial sentencing• ‘Three strikes and your out’ drugs laws• ‘Anti-Mafia’ legislation• Plea-bargaining• More effective police and prosecutors• Dependent judiciary• Miniscule acquittal rate

The Great Confinement

And the Winner is…Georgia?

Carceral Economics

Positive Externalities

• Unemployment kept down• Prison building helps poor, rural areas• Saves on social spending in unequal society

and deregulated labour market• Helps control politics and opposition• Confidence for investors and the wealthy• ….and zero tolerance reduces crime!

Victimization Rates

Victimization Rates (%)

2.5

3.5

1.6

0.5

4.3

8.8

3.23.7

0.5 0.80.2 0.4

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Burglary Personal Theft Robbery Assault

Crime Type

%

1992

1996

2010

Perceptions• Fear of crime relatively high in the 1990s• Feelings of security have increased• Yet people believe that crime is still

increasing• Popular punitivism: 32% believe that

punishments need to be harsh• Feedback loop: state policy creates

perceptions of disorder maintaining demand for policy itself

• However, most feel that prison population is too high and many protest govt policy

Safe Schools• 2002-2003: ‘educating for legality’ idea

imported from the US via Sicily

• 2007-2008: UNICEF research supports introduction of Safe Schools initiative

• 2008: Project Harmony implement legal socialization project

• 2010: legislation passed and mandaturi and CCTV enter schools

Mandaturi

2010: Zero Tolerance in Schools

• Mandaturi report on all disciplinary issues to the Ministry, including truancy, lateness and teacher behaviour

• Patrol the perimeter of school, CCTV

• Policing now competing with teaching as a mode of socialization

• Reduce discretion in punitive responses

Governing Through Crime

• Use of criminal justice logics and practices in other spheres

• Policy-making in other spheres framed in a criminological discourse

• Heavy concentration on crime and victims of crime in the media and govt rhetoric

• The logic of zero tolerance expanding outwards

Competing Frameworks

• Response to fear of school crime?- School killings in 2007- Victimization levels?

• Ministry incentive to control schools?- Fear of crime partly produced- Discourse of us vs. them:

dzvelibichoba• Or wider mode of governance in de-regulated

economy?- ‘preparation for post-industrial

discipline’- ‘prison-school complex’

Explaining ‘Criminalization’• Incentive to control admin of schooling

• Genuine concerns in society over school crime

• Control of media and govt emphasis on crime: political utility in fear

• Developed networks: promote criminal justice logics; power of Interior Ministry

• Safe Schools policy ideas already floated

Issues for Research: Impacts

• US research: powerlessness and distrust• At odds with developments in other ministries• Not popular with teachers in Georgia?• But, popular with parents?• What about the children themselves?• How to design research into this?• Where next for Governing through Crime?