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Background

The Georgian Prison System

The Georgian prison system was transferred officially from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Justice in January 2000, in accordance with the requirements of the Council of Europe.¹  According to the Ministry of Justice, the official capacity of the prison system is 9,026 detainees.² As of June 2006, the population of Georgia’s prisons stood at 12,992 detainees, however. Nearly 63 percent of those detained are remand prisoners awaiting trial. ³  The prison population has grown rapidly in recent years, rising 51 percent in the last year, and increasing 85.6 percent in the last two years.⁴

The prison system consists of 16 operational facilities, including a Republican Prison Hospital and a tuberculosis hospital for inmates in Ksani. There is one facility for convicted women prisoners in Tbilisi. There is an educational institution for juvenile convicts under the age of 18 in Avchala, near Tbilisi. According to the Law on Imprisonment, women, children, first-time convicts, prisoners facing life sentences, and former staff of the special state guard are to be detained in separate facilities. Convicts living with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases are detained separately in the prison system’s medical department.⁵ 

According to the Law on Imprisonment, convicted prisoners serve their sentence under one of three types of regime: general regime, strict regime, and prison regime. Penitentiary institutions may operate with one or several regimes. Under amendments that came into force on June 1, 2006, the head of the penitentiary system determines under which regime a prisoner will serve his or her sentence; previously, a judge determined not only the length of sentence, but also under which regime it should be served.⁶  Although the Law on Imprisonment sets out the conditions and entitlements of each regime, Human Rights Watch’s research indicates a serious gap between these legal provisions and the practice in prisons, as described below. According to law, first-time prisoners serving sentences for less serious crimes or where culpability was based on negligence or recklessness, as well as female prisoners, serve their sentences under the general or common regime. This regime should mean that prisoners live in common accommodation, such as barracks or a dormitory, unless otherwise determined by the internal procedure; have the right to walk freely within the facility, according to internal procedures; and are allowed two visits from family or friends per month.⁷

First-time prisoners convicted of grave c rimes, recidivists, and dangerous recidivists are subject to the strict regime. According to law, under the strict regime prisoners should also live in common accommodation, unless otherwise determined by internal procedure; have the right to walk freely within the facility, according to internal procedures; and receive one personal visit per month, except for recidivists, who are allowed only one such visit every two months.⁸

The prison regime is the strictest regime and is reserved for prisoners serving life sentences, particularly serious recidivists, and prisoners who committed crimes while in detention.⁹  The prison regime is further divided into a general and strict prison regime. Under the general prison regime, prisoners convicted for the first time, or those transferred from a strict prison regime, live in cells with no more than four convicts. By law cells are subject to visual surveillance.¹⁰  Inmates have the right to a two-hour daily walk and are allowed no more than three visits per year.¹¹  The most serious offenders, including recidivists or those who committed crimes in detention, serve sentences under the strict prison regime. One or two prisoners share a cell, which is also subject to visual surveillance. Prisoners serving sentences under this regime may only perform work that does not require them to exit the cell. They are entitled to a one-hour daily walk and are allowed only two visits annually, under the supervision of the prison administration.¹²

By law, detainees in pre-trial detention should be held in separate facilities. In practice, this is not always the case. Pre-trial detainees and sentenced prisoners are sometimes held together in the same facility, or even in the same cell.¹³  The law provides that pre-trial detainees should be held in closed cells and, according to amendments effective June 1, 2006, should be given uniforms. The law does not specify the types and amount of exercise to which pre-trial detainees are entitled.¹⁴  

Local and international nongovernmental organizations and international organizations have long expressed concern over prison conditions in Georgia and have noted the government’s failure to address these concerns. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), which visited Georgia in May 2001 and again in November 2003 and May 2004, for example, stated in its first report, “… the vast majority of inmates at Prison No 5 were subject to a combination of negative factors—overcrowding, appalling material conditions and levels of hygiene, major deficiencies of health care, practically non-existent activity programmes—the cumulative effect of which could easily be described as inhuman and degrading treatment.”¹⁵ In its 2004 report, the committee noted, “Unfortunately, the facts found during the second periodic visit indicate that many of the recommendations made after the visit in 2001 have not been implemented, and that in some respects the situation has even deteriorated.”¹⁶  The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, following his visit to Georgia in February 2005 also noted the poor conditions of detention and made several recommendations to improve the situation.¹⁷

Organized Crime in Georgia

There is little academic research on organized crime in Georgia. The most comprehensive study available was published by the Georgia Office of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TCCC) in 2004.¹⁸   TCCC scholars trace the emergence of organized crime in Georgia to the 16^th century. Organized crime was an influential phenomenon throughout the Russian empire, of which modern Georgia was a part, and a large number of organized crime figures had become concentrated in Georgia by the early Soviet period.¹⁹  After several years of open confrontation between different criminal groups lo cated throughout the Soviet Union, one category of criminals, the “thieves in law” (in Georgian, kanonieri qurdebi; in Russian, vory v zakone), emerged at the top of the criminal hierarchy, most likely in the early 1930s.²⁰   They were characterized by their ideological opposition to the Soviet political regime and their adherence to a strict set of unwritten laws.²¹ After a decline in their numbers and influence under Stalin, they again expanded their authority in the post-Stalin thaw period and into the 1970s and 1980s,²² particularly in Georgia.²³  The thieves in law emerged as a powerful force by taking advantage of the chaotic political and economic situation during the collapse of the Soviet Union. They further consolidated their social and economic authority during the initial years of independence, during the presidency of Zviad Gamsakhurdia.²⁴ One academic report stated that by 2003 there were some 364 thieves in law in Georgia.²⁵  They are associated with various crimes, including human, drug, and weapons trafficking; kidnapping; goods smuggling; racketeering; and black market activities.²⁶

Organized Crime in the Georgian Penitentiary System

For over a century, organized crime has dominated the prison systems of, successively, the Russian empire, the Soviet Union, and independent Georgia. In the early part of the twentieth century, organized crime figures came to control the Russian imperial prison system and used it as a “criminal academy” for indoctrinating others and recruiting additional members. Prison life functioned according to a strict hierarchy and the laws and rules of the criminal world.²⁷  This system continued to function during the Soviet era, and, as the thieves in law consolidated their authority, they also emerged at the top of the Soviet prison system, the GULAG. Soviet government attempts to combat the authority of the thieves in law in the 1940s and 1950s resulted in both the execution of a large number of thieves in law, as well as an increasing concentration of the thieves in law in the prisons.

Through threats, coercion, and cooptation, the thieves in law held tremendous influence over other prisoners and the prison authorities. According to the ombudsman of Georgia, one of the major problems facing the Penitentiary Department in 2004 and 2005 was that the thieves in law exerted “full control over the processes inside the prisons and, more importantly, control from within the prisons on the processes outside.”²⁸  The thieves in law allegedly enjoyed countless privileges in the prisons, including better rooms, furniture, food, cell phones, as well as alcohol and narcotics, free movement in the prisons and between prisons, access to prostitutes, and were even seen in public together with government authorities.²⁹  The thieves in law also extorted payments from prisoners,³⁰ and were able to commit murders and other crimes in the prisons as punishment for those who disobeyed their rules.³¹  The thieves in law maintained this order in the prisons with considerable assistance from their associates located outside the prisons.³² 

Government Efforts to Combat Organized Crime

Beginning with the Soviet authorities in the 1980s, the Georgian government has made numerous efforts to undo the influence and power of the thieves in law. In 1995 the government of Eduard Shevardnadze initiated a campaign against the thieves in law that continued throughout his presidency. Many were arrested and many others felt compelled to leave Georgia, fleeing mostly to Russia. As minister of justice from October 2000 to September 2001, Mikheil Saakashvili played a key role in this campaign.³³  Upon his election to the presidency in 2004, Saakashvili declared the fight against corruption and organized crime to be one of his priorities.³⁴ However, Georgia has not acceded to most of the major international documents regarding corruption and organized crime, having ratified only the Council of Europe Civil Law Convention on Corruption, in May 2003, under Shevardnadze.³⁵

In December 2005, the Georgian parliament passed new legislation addressing organized crime, and the government began to take practical and legislative measures to eliminate the power of the thieves in law, including in the prisons. In a speech delivered after signing the organized crime bill into law, President Saakashvili stated, “We will put an end, once and for all, to the crime bosses’ free ride in prisons.”³⁶  Saakashvili also appointed a new minister of justice, Gia Kavtaradze, and named a new head of the penitentiary system, Bacho Akhalaia, who was formerly a deputy ombudsman, to implement the new policies. Since this time, apparently all of the existing senior prison officials have been fired and replaced primarily with former Ministry of Interior employees.³⁷  Beginning in December 2005, the authorities moved all of the suspected thieves in law to Prison No. 7 in Tbilisi, the capital, allegedly in order to control them and reduce their power. The thieves in law have allegedly been stripped of all of their privileges.