Unlikely downsizers: The prison service's role in reversing mass incarceration in Kazakhstan
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231177020 |
| Author | Gavin Slade,Alexei Trochev,Laura Piacentini |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Unlikely downsizers:
The prison service’s role in
reversing mass incarceration
in Kazakhstan
Gavin Slade
Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
Alexei Trochev
Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
Laura Piacentini
University of Strathclyde School of Applied Social Sciences, UK
Abstract
Since 2000, the prison rate has declined significantly in Kazakhstan. This article demon-
strates that the Kazakhstani prison service, counterintuitively, became a key advocate of
prison downsizing owing to a coalescence of norms and incentives in the 1980s and
1990s. In the process, the prison service elite maintained the loyalty of rank-and-file per-
sonnel through a focus on reform to performative and quantifiable measures of penal
performance –such as rankings in the World Prison Brief –while qualitative changes
to the service’s identity and organization remained unchanged. Prison staff remained
militarized and their livelihood and professional culture continued to be independent
of the existence of prisons. In conclusion, we argue that the Kazakhstani case demon-
strates the need for an integrative theory of penal change that focuses on the interplay
of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors in relationally shaping the norms, incentives
and opportunities of penal policy actors.
Corresponding author:
Gavin Slade, Nazarbayev University, 53 Kabanbay Batyr, Astana, Akmola 010000, Kazakhstan.
Email: Gavin.slade@nu.edu.kz
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(4) 573–596
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806231177020
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
Keywords
prison rates, downsizing, agonist, prison service, Kazakhstan, post-Soviet
Introduction
Why do some jurisdictions turn towards leniency, limit prison sentences and downsize
their prison systems? In this article, we analyse the rapidly declining use of prisons in
Kazakhstan, a former Soviet jurisdiction in Central Asia, an area of the world where
greater punitiveness was predicted after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Christie,
2000). Kazakhstan had many structural ‘risk factors’(Webster and Doob, 2007) that
would predict prison upsizing: deregulated markets, high levels of inequality and
poverty, as well as a Soviet legacy of the capacity for and culture of mass incarceration
(Piacentini, 2004; Slade, 2017; Wacquant, 2001). Despite these inflationary penal pres-
sures, two waves of decarceration occurred in Kazakhstan –from 2001 to 2005 and
from 2010 onwards. By 2020, the prison population was 64% lower than it had been
in 2000.
To explain the unexpected prison-downsizing trend we adopt, and ultimately go
beyond, an agonist framework. An agonist approach ‘centers on the following axiom:
penal development is the product of struggle between actors with different types and
amounts of power’(Goodman et al., 2017: 8). In the case of Kazakhstan, executive
bodies such as the presidential administration and prosecution service pushed for
prison reductions, aided by the super-presidential and authoritarian system (Trochev
and Slade, 2019). This move went against public opinion (Van Dijk et al., 2018), the judi-
ciary and the preferences of law enforcement bodies. Yet, the move was supported, and to
some degree led by, an unlikely downsizing agonist: the Kazakhstani Penitentiary System
Committee, the prison service. Prison services and their employees’unions are usually
theorized as status quo actors, combining with victims’groups to argue against prison
downsizing (Page, 2011a, 2011b; Eisenberg, 2016). Thus, the article aims to explain
how in Kazakhstan the prison service became an influential pro-downsizing actor.
We argue that the prison service’s position was taken partly because of a slowly build-
ing mobilization of bias in favour of smaller prison populations in the 1980s and 1990s,
and partly because of a lack of reform of the service in other areas. The Kazakhstani
prison service remains militarized. As such, prison officers are not allowed to form
trade unions or political parties that could produce the collective action required to
impede prison reform. Moreover, prison officers often have career trajectories that
involve switching between military and policing roles. They do not necessarily associate
their professional identity with prisons. Surveys suggest that the prison service
rank-and-file could support downsizing as long as there was no wider expansion of pris-
oners’rights, improvement in prison conditions or greater scrutiny of prison guards’work
(Bastemiev, 2009). Fewer prisoners do not necessarily mean fewer jobs. However,
empowered prisoners might mean jobs that are less desirable.
To demonstrate this argument, we utilize data from expert interviews with high-
ranking or formerly high-ranking officials in the prison service, the Ministry of
Interior, the prosecution service and the presidential administration. In conclusion, we
highlight the interplay of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors analysed in the article.
574 Theoretical Criminology 27(4)
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