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Violent Death After Communism
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property of citizens.”
20
The recent institutional economics literature even uses the
incidence of crime, including one must presume violent crime, as indirect indicators of the quality of protection of property rights.
21
The highly general hypothesis above may
be refined to (H2) The strength of the rule of law is associated with diminishing rates of violent death.
2.Less general still is the expected connection between violent crime and progress with regard to criminal justice reform. Two aspects of the criminal justice system are commonly identified as crucial to an effective restoration of order: (i) junking the now inadequate Soviet approach to law enforcement and justice, and (ii) reestablishing a credible deterrent effect, said to have been lost with the disintegration of a centralized, Union-wide institutions.
(i) To become adequate to the task of non-repressive social control, ex-communist states were urged to “de-Sovietize” their criminal justice systems. De-Sovietization required the decriminalization of acts that could no longer be plausibly treated as crimes, namely “political” crimes and socialist property crimes; and the decentralization of the state’s legal machinery, in particular by diminishing the powers of the police and the procurators (prosecutors) and empowering an independent judiciary. As USAID summarized the main goals of legal reform in the FSU, “[l]aws needed to change; [and] prosecutors needed to relinquish power to judges, who needed to become more independent.”
22
Decriminalization was deemed necessary not only because it offended the non-socialist notion of justice to criminally punish deviations from the party line, but because the very definitions of many such crimes became absurd and unenforceable, as with “speculation,” “profiteering,” and “spreading anti-Soviet propaganda” for instance. At the same time, “capitalist” crimes – crimes against private property, conspiracy laws, and so on -- needed to be introduced.
23
Decriminalization required adopting new Criminal Codes, or at
least amending extensively the Soviet-era Criminal Codes and Codes of Administrative Offenses.
24
Decentralization of the Soviet centralized investigative, adjudicative and
punitive machinery was deemed necessary both to secure individuals’ due process rights, and to augment the effectiveness of law enforcement. The distribution of competences endowed the police, and any MVD enforcement or investigation organ for that matter, with far broader licenses than their counterparts in other countries. At trial, the Soviet
20
Kleinfeld, p. 11. Belton points out further that “despite its importance to the popular conception of the
rule of law… law and order tends to be outside mainstream rule-of-law building project,” p.11
21
See for e.g. Frye, Timothy and Andrei Shleifer. 1997. The Invisible and the Grabbing Hand. The
American Economic Review, vol. 87, No 2, pp. 354-358; Krkoska, Libor and Katrin Robeck. The impact of crime on the enterprise sector: Transition versus non-transition countries. EBRD Working Paper No. 97, May 2006.
22
USAID. 2002. Achievements in Building and Maintaining the Rule of Law. MSI’s Studies in LAC, E&E,
AFR, and ANE. Occasional Papers Series p 12.
23
See for e.g. Lindbreg and Markovic: “Lacking effective Western-style conspiracy laws like R.I.C.O.,
Russian prosecutors are powerless to convict and incarcerate top leadership for running a continuing criminal enterprise.”
24
Under Soviet law, many of the lesser offenses (comparable to misdemeanors) were treated as
“administrative offenses,” incurring administrative penalties, which were at times indistinguishable from criminal penalties.
9
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property of citizens.”
The recent institutional economics literature even uses the
incidence of crime, including one must presume violent crime, as indirect indicators of
the quality of protection of property rights.
The highly general hypothesis above may
be refined to
(H2) The strength of the rule of law is associated with diminishing rates of violent
death.
2.
Less general still is the expected connection between violent crime and progress with
regard to criminal justice reform. Two aspects of the criminal justice system are
commonly identified as crucial to an effective restoration of order: (i) junking the now
inadequate Soviet approach to law enforcement and justice, and (ii) reestablishing a
credible deterrent effect, said to have been lost with the disintegration of a centralized,
Union-wide institutions.
(i)
To become adequate to the task of non-repressive social control, ex-communist states
were urged to “de-Sovietize” their criminal justice systems. De-Sovietization required the
decriminalization of acts that could no longer be plausibly treated as crimes, namely
“political” crimes and socialist property crimes; and the decentralization of the state’s
legal machinery, in particular by diminishing the powers of the police and the procurators
(prosecutors) and empowering an independent judiciary. As USAID summarized the
main goals of legal reform in the FSU, “[l]aws needed to change; [and] prosecutors
needed to relinquish power to judges, who needed to become more independent.”
Decriminalization was deemed necessary not only because it offended the non-socialist
notion of justice to criminally punish deviations from the party line, but because the very
definitions of many such crimes became absurd and unenforceable, as with “speculation,”
“profiteering,” and “spreading anti-Soviet propaganda” for instance. At the same time,
“capitalist” crimes – crimes against private property, conspiracy laws, and so on --
needed to be introduced.
Decriminalization required adopting new Criminal Codes, or at
least amending extensively the Soviet-era Criminal Codes and Codes of Administrative
Offenses.
Decentralization of the Soviet centralized investigative, adjudicative and
punitive machinery was deemed necessary both to secure individuals’ due process rights,
and to augment the effectiveness of law enforcement. The distribution of competences
endowed the police, and any MVD enforcement or investigation organ for that matter,
with far broader licenses than their counterparts in other countries. At trial, the Soviet
20
Kleinfeld, p. 11. Belton points out further that “despite its importance to the popular conception of the
rule of law… law and order tends to be outside mainstream rule-of-law building project,” p.11
21
See for e.g. Frye, Timothy and Andrei Shleifer. 1997. The Invisible and the Grabbing Hand. The
American Economic Review, vol. 87, No 2, pp. 354-358; Krkoska, Libor and Katrin Robeck. The impact of
crime on the enterprise sector: Transition versus non-transition countries. EBRD Working Paper No. 97,
May 2006.
22
USAID. 2002. Achievements in Building and Maintaining the Rule of Law. MSI’s Studies in LAC, E&E,
AFR, and ANE. Occasional Papers Series p 12.
23
See for e.g. Lindbreg and Markovic: “Lacking effective Western-style conspiracy laws like R.I.C.O.,
Russian prosecutors are powerless to convict and incarcerate top leadership for running a continuing
criminal enterprise.”
24
Under Soviet law, many of the lesser offenses (comparable to misdemeanors) were treated as
“administrative offenses,” incurring administrative penalties, which were at times indistinguishable from
criminal penalties.
9
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