A criminology of the postsocialist East

This article critically engages with recent calls for a Global East criminology that highlight the marginalisation of East-Central Europe and Eurasia (ECEE) in criminological knowledge production. It argues that a focus on epistemological exclusion should not obscure the unequal integration of ex-socialist states into the global economy and the inequalities this generates within and between them. Bringing postsocialism into conversation with recent critical criminological accounts of neo-colonialism, the article shows how criminological inquiry in and from the East can illuminate the mechanisms and violent consequences of the global system of capital accumulation. Using the case of Georgia — and the mining town of Chiatura — it demonstrates how neoliberal restructuring, anti-communist ideology, and the selective reappropriation of socialist legacies combine to enable the state-corporate co-production of crime and harm in a postsocialist setting.