Europeanisation of post‐Soviet prisons: A comparative case study of prison policy transfer from Norway to Latvia and Lithuania
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Author | Nadejda Burciu |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12512 |
Received: 11 February2022 Accepted: 30 August 2022
DOI: 10.1111/ho jo.12512
SPECIAL ISSUE
Europeanisation of post-Soviet prisons: A
comparative case study of prison policy transfer
from Norway to Latvia and Lithuania
Nadejda Burciu
Secretary of State, the Ministry of Justice
of the Republic of Moldova
Correspondence
Nadejda Burciu, Secretary of State, the
Ministry of Justice of the Republic of
Moldova.
Email: nadia.burciu@outlook.com
Abstract
Despite shared history and a common ambition to
comply with European standards, post-Soviet countries
differ in the way in which they reform prisons. By inves-
tigating two most-similar cases of policy transfer from
Norway – the establishment of the Olaine Drug Centre
in Latvia and the Pravienišk˙
es Drug Unit in Lithua-
nia – this article explains why outcomes diverge and
how Western-European carceral individualism clashes
with path-dependent carceral collectivism. Where lead-
ership is unstable, with limited powers, the informal
legacies are strong, and policy-transfer strategy is frag-
mented, as in Lithuania, the outcome is likely to be
non-transformative. Where, on the contrary, leadership
is stable, enjoying larger discretionary powers and the
intervention strategy is holistic, as in Latvia, the import
of foreign institutional models is likely to be successful.
KEYWORDS
Europeanisation, institutional change, path dependence, policy
transfer, post-Soviet countries, prisons
© 2023 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
102 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hojo HowardJ. Crim. Justice. 2023;62:102–118.
THE HOWARDJOURNAL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE 103
1 INTRODUCTION
Europeanisation of post-Soviet prisons is an intriguing phenomenon because the area offers a nat-
ural experiment: a common starting point, shared historical legacies, similar prison architecture
and penal culture, yet divergent reform trajectories and contrasting human rights records (Slade,
2017; Slade & Light, 2015). Although Baltic states simultaneously embarked on the Europeanisa-
tion path, their prison reform success differs. Estonia managed to fully transform its prison system
into a ‘Western-style’ model in the early 1990s (Piacentini & Slade, 2015, p.194). Latvia managed to
restructure and improve the prison conditions for about 40% of its prison population (who lived in
smaller renovated cells) by 1999, as noted by the European Committee for the Prevention of Tor-
ture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatmentof Punishment (CPT, 2001, p.39). By contrast, the most
recent CPT report on Lithuania reveals that only one establishment is a ‘cell-typeregime’. The rest
are ‘dormitory type’ facilities, also called ‘barracks’ which accommodate around20 prisoners each
(CPT, 2019,p.8).
The process by which prisons become more ‘European-like’ had received limited scholarly
attention. Europeanisation is conceptualised as a ‘process of domestic adaptation’ (Jaremba &
Mayoral, 2019, p.387) – namely, a sequence of changes by which the national prison policy and
practice is gradually adjusted to what scholars termed ‘European Prison Policy’ – a body of prin-
ciples derived from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law; recommendations
on prison matters of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE); the CPT stan-
dards; and the framework decisions of the European Union (EU) concerning penal matters (Cid
&Andreu,2017; Van Zyl Smit & Snacken, 2009). This process also requires an ‘internalisation’
of European values and paradigms (Checkel, 2001). Scholars investigatingthe resilience of Soviet
legacies found that the European penal governance model is at odds with the Soviet one due
to architecture differences and cultural attachment to this punishment philosophy (Piacentini &
Slade, 2015). The puzzling question is then: how will ‘rules on the ground’ (micro-level soviet
legacy) and the rules coming from above (meso- and macro-level push for Europeanisation)
interplay and where would they eventually clash?
Both Latvia and Lithuania undertook reforms aimed at decarceration, gradually converging
towards the European median prison population rate. Lithuania’s incarceration rate decreased
from 334 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012 to 190 in 2021, whereas Latvia’s rate dropped
from 303 in 2012 to 160 in 2021 (EuroPris, n.d.). Both countries have been receiving extensive
support from Norway in their efforts to humanise prisons, via the European Economic Area
(EEA)/Norway Grants platform. The EEA Agreement enables European Free Trade Association
(EFTA) Member States to participate in the EU Single Market and aims to reduce economic and
social disparities in Europe (EEA Agreement, 1994). Both states decided to establish prison drug
units with Norwegian funding during 2012–2017, and both aimed at improving compliance with
international human rights standards (Ecorys, 2019, p.34).Yet the two cases differ in their formula-
tion of intended change and intervention strategy, in the durationand quality of policy learning.
This article focuses its inquiry at the prison level to trace two instances of policy transfer and
capture the conditions in which institutional change succeeds or fails. The assumption is that
previous policy steps impacted actors’ ambition for reform and their capacity to adopt innovative
solutions from Norway.
A comparative most-similar-cases design is adopted to investigate a ‘configuration’ of factors
in each case (Ragin, 2000, pp.64–87), compare ‘causal pathways’ (Ragin, 1997) and ‘rule out’
conditions that are present in both cases, thereby identifying and weighing the diverging
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