Title: Crime, Criminal Justice and Criminology in Post-Soviet Ukraine
Series: Issues in International Crime
Author: Todd S. Foglesong and Peter H. Solomon, Jr.
Published: National Institute of Justice, July 2001
Subject: International Issues: transnational crime,
transnational/international organized crime
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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

Crime, Criminal Justice, and Criminology in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Todd S. Foglesong and Peter H. Solomon, Jr.

Issues in International Crime

---------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

John Ashcroft
Attorney General

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

---------------------------

Crime, Criminal Justice, and Criminology in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Todd S. Foglesong and Peter H. Solomon, Jr.

July 2001
NCJ 186166

Issues in International Crime

---------------------------

National Institute of Justice

James O. Finckenauer
Program Monitor

Todd S. Foglesong is a visiting assistant professor of political science at
the University of Utah. Peter H. Solomon, Jr., is a professor of political
science, criminology, and law at the University of Toronto, where he is
also director of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies.

Prepared for the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice,
by Abt Associates Inc., under grant number 99-IJ-CX-0012. Points of
view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do
not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

---------------------------

Foreword

As the world shrinks with the ever-increasing speed of communications,
the United States faces new challenges resulting from the growing
transnational character of crime. Criminal justice officials and
policymakers now have to deal with offenses and offenders whose origins
and connections lie outside this country. Criminal organizations are
becoming increasingly sophisticated and international in the scope of their
activities. Foreign policy professionals now have to grapple with issues
once considered purely local, such as crime and police reform.

Yet as the challenges multiply, the supply of information has not kept
pace. Academics and policymakers alike lament the dearth of information
on transnational crime. 

To bridge the gap between research, policy, and practice, the National
Institute of Justice (NIJ) sponsors the "Issues in International Crime"
monograph series, which presents the results of research in this emerging
field. The research published in this series is coordinated through NIJ's
International Center, whose mission is to stimulate and facilitate research
on international crime and justice issues and to disseminate the results of
that research to policymakers at all levels.

Primarily analytical rather than empirical in nature, the series serves as a
vehicle for communicating information on international crime to a target
audience that includes policymakers inside and outside the criminal justice
system who are attempting to prepare informed policies on complex
transnational crime issues, academics who can synthesize the information
and teach others about these issues, and criminal justice practitioners.

This inaugural monograph, a "white paper" on crime and justice issues in
Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is a product of
the U.S.-Ukraine Research Partnership that has been conducted by the NIJ
International Center since 1998. This partnership reflects the high level of
importance that the United States attaches to its rule-of-law and
transnational crime initiatives in Ukraine. 

Subsequent monographs in this series will deal with the Russian organized
crime threat, police reform abroad, and the impact of corruption on U.S.
aid to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

---------------------------

Preface

This study analyzes crime, criminal justice, and criminology in
post-Soviet Ukraine. Its purpose is to introduce U.S. criminologists,
criminal justice researchers, and other observers to the state of crime and
justice in Ukraine. The work will also help scholars understand the
character of Ukrainian criminology and assist researchers from both
countries in identifying possible projects and potential partners for
collaborative inquiries.

Chapter 1 is an interpretive analysis of recent Ukrainian political history.
It describes the emergence of independent Ukraine and its regional
differences, written and working Constitution, central political institutions,
and current socioeconomic predicament. Chapter 2 examines patterns of
crime and criminality in Ukraine since 1972. It scrutinizes data on
ordinary, economic, business, and organized crime, and it explores the
reasons behind their growth and transformation in the past 25 years.
Chapter 3 analyzes the past and present system of criminal justice in
Ukraine. It focuses on problems in policing, prosecution, and criminal
procedure, and offers an assessment of the regime's response to crime.
Chapter 4 outlines the main institutions and topics of criminological
research in Ukraine today.

The authors relied upon not only published Russian and Ukrainian
literature but also unpublished materials, including statistical reports and
government studies, as well as interviews with many scholars, judges,
legal officials, procurators, and police officers. Foglesong and Solomon
benefited from research assistance and advice from many scholars and
legal officials in Ukraine, including Iu.M. Groshevoi, A.G. Kulik, A.A.
Svetlov, A.P. Zakaliuk, and V.S. Zelenetskii. The authors are also pleased
to acknowledge the contributions of Paul D'Anieri and Rosemary Gartner.
In addition, Jim Finckenauer, Gary Chick, Jolene Hernon, and Mark
Eckert helped greatly with the publication of this study.

---------------------------

Contents

Foreword

Preface 

Chapter 1: Independent Ukraine: An Overview 

Geopolitical Significance
Internal Divisions
The Ambiguous and Ambivalent Emergence of Independence
Ukraine's Constitution
Ukraine's Weak State and the Problem of Economic Reform
The Outlook: After the Presidential Elections

Chapter 2: Crime and Criminality in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Patterns of Criminality and Ordinary Crime
Explaining Patterns of Criminality
Business Crime and Crime in the Economy
Organized Crime and Corruption
Conclusions

Chapter 3: Criminal Justice in Post-Soviet Ukraine

The Soviet Legacy
Post-Soviet Criminal Justice
Fighting Crime in Ukraine: Assessing the Regime's Response
The Future of Criminal Justice Reforms

Chapter 4: Soviet and Post-Soviet Criminology in Ukraine

---------------------------

Independent Ukraine: An Overview

Geopolitical Significance

Ukraine is one of the linchpins of stability in East-Central Europe.
Comparable to France in both area and population, Ukraine is, after
Russia, the largest and most prominent of the successor states of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). Ukraine's geopolitical
significance stems not only from its size but also from its location and
economic potential. Ukraine connects Western and Eastern Europe. It is,
as political geographers say, a critical borderland. Surrounded by Russia in
the East, Belarus in the North, the Black Sea in the South, and Poland,
Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania in the West, Ukraine is central
to European regional security. Ukraine's continued independence will
make it impossible for Russia to extend its influence west. As Zbigniew
Brzezinski maintains, "It cannot be stressed strongly enough that without
Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and
then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire."[1]

With NATO expanding its borders eastward to Ukraine's western edge, the
country's role in maintaining regional stability has only increased. If a
newly expanded NATO does not want to find itself facing a resurgent
Russia, Ukraine will have to remain independent and resist the stationing
of Russia's troops on its soil. Ukraine clearly has the political desire to
remain independent of Russia, but it is not clear that Ukraine has the
economic wherewithal and internal stability to back up its political goals.
Its turbulent history, the legacy of Soviet rule, the immaturity of its
democracy, and the chaos of its economy call into question Ukraine's
coherence as an independent state. Moreover, if Ukraine continues to
provide a hospitable environment for organized crime, it will provide a
constant source of problems for NATO and European Union (EU)
countries, as problems with the drug trade and trafficking in women
already demonstrate. These factors help explain the immense attention the
country has received in U.S. foreign policy in recent years (in 1998,
Ukraine was the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, behind only
Israel and Egypt).[2]

Internal Divisions

Ukraine's history has been defined by its own internal divisions between
east and west. Most of eastern Ukraine has been under Russian control
since the 17th century, and the Russian state today traces its roots to
medieval Kiev (which it emphatically calls Kievan Rus). The western
quarter of the country (including areas traditionally known as Galicia),
with between one-fifth and one-sixth of the total population, was not
linked to Russia or the Soviet Union until 1939. These areas were part of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1920, when a large portion of this
territory was incorporated into interwar Poland; it did not become part of
the U.S.S.R. until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact ceded this part of Poland
to the U.S.S.R.

This divisive and well-remembered history is largely responsible for two
complicated political problems today. First, Ukrainian society is divided
into two parts with largely different histories, different experiences with
democracy and the free market, and different attitudes toward those
institutions. The population in the western part tends to identify with the
models being provided by its neighbors to the west-the former Hapsburg
territories of Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. In eastern Ukraine, ties with
Russia are much stronger, and there is greater identification with and
affinity for traditionally Russian political culture and institutions.

Second, Ukraine has a very complex relationship with Russia, with its
citizens' attitudes toward Russia tending to follow Ukraine's regional
divisions. For Ukrainian nationalists, Russia is the historical enemy of the
Ukrainian people, having subjugated Ukraine in the 17th and 18th
centuries and then causing the deaths of millions of Ukrainians during the
Great Famine of 1932 and 1933. Other Ukrainians identify closely with
Russia because of their shared history, language, and culture and a high
rate of intermarriage between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians, who
make up 22 percent of the population of Ukraine. Although 73 percent of
Ukrainian residents identified themselves as "Ukrainian" in the 1989
Soviet census, only a minority (approximately 40 percent) of Ukrainian
citizens speak Ukrainian as their primary language, and a large number of
ethnic Ukrainians define themselves as having mixed Russian-Ukrainian
ethnicity when given that choice on surveys.[3] For these ecumenically
minded Ukrainians, Russia and Ukraine have indissoluble links: The two
countries sprang from the same source--medieval Kiev--and have shared
similar and tragic fates.

Moments of political unity in Ukraine have been rare. Ukraine's
declaration of independence, for example, was widely supported across the
political spectrum, and in the December 1991 referendum on
independence, more than 90 percent of citizens voted for independence,
including a majority in every region of Ukraine, even those traditionally
linked to Russia. Since that time, however, the society and government
have been divided about how to proceed on virtually all significant issues,
including relations with Russia. Many of those who supported
independence were dismayed to see the government rupturing
longstanding ties with Russia. After several years of acrimonious relations,
a tentative compromise was reached, in which Ukraine upholds economic
ties with Russia but does not participate in Russian-led regional groupings
such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Customs Union.
On the central question of domestic economic reform, however, there is no
consensus, little middle ground, and virtually no prospect for a
harmonious political resolution.

The Ambiguous and Ambivalent Emergence of  Independence

Like other Soviet successor states, Ukraine first acquired economic
autonomy as a result of the political decentralizations of the Mikhail
Gorbachev era. Gorbachev had hoped to improve the country's economic
performance by increasing the authority and accountability of the
constituent republics and by taking decisions out of the hands of the
middle-level bureaucrats who depended on the stagnation of Leonid
Brezhnev's system for their survival. The first and last President of the
U.S.S.R. was willing to concede daily control of both political and
economic affairs as long as the republics would pursue centrally set,
Union-wide goals. Greater autonomy, of course, appealed to both
Ukrainian nationalists and the reigning political elite in Kyiv. Politicians
gained notoriety and power without much added accountability, and
nationalists acquired the semblance of statehood. When the opportunity
for a nonbinding and painless proclamation of sovereignty presented itself
in July 1990, Ukraine took it. Well before the collapse of the Soviet
Union, therefore, Ukraine enjoyed most of the prerogatives of an
independent state without losing its membership in or access to the
resources of a reorganized U.S.S.R.[4]

Genuine independence was achieved suddenly, in the wake of the August
1991 putsch. In fact, the Ukrainian state was created almost
spontaneously, in a rush of pronouncements in the late summer and fall of
1991.[5] An amalgam of nationalists and an opportunistic political elite
hammered out a pact of mutual convenience that led to Ukraine's secession
from the U.S.S.R. Put simply, the nationalists made a deal with political
and economic officials (the nomenklatura) in Kyiv. The nationalists
promised not to try removing the government from power in its drive for
independence if the government in Kyiv would break with the Soviet
Union. This was considered positive by both sides: The nomenklatura
obtained its primary goal, retaining power, and the nationalists achieved
their ultimate goal, an independent Ukraine. Finally, in December 1991, in
a Belorussian forest outside Minsk, President Leonid Kravchuk signed an
agreement terminating Ukraine's participation in the Soviet Union.

The fact that independence was brought about neither by revolution nor by
the overthrow of the ruling elite has had lasting consequences for politics
and policies in Ukraine. By agreeing to let the Communist-era government
retain power under a new label, the opposition made future political and
economic change extremely difficult. Very few, if any, government
officials had an interest in the rapid changes that political and economic
reformers sought and that the country objectively needed. Also, the
expectations among nationalist reformers that the old guard would
gradually be swept from power were naive. Since 1991, the nomenklatura
has managed quite easily to preserve real power and control over property
by means of a simple strategy--by "recruiting to its ranks the most
conformist leaders of the former counter-elite and by a timely change in its
slogans for the sake of a new 'legitimacy.'"[6] In addition, the Communist
Party of Ukraine, to which many elite figures still belong, has been at least
as rigid and conservative as Russia's (observers had speculated that the
Ukrainian communists endorsed independence so Gorbachev would not
force upon them reformist economic policies). The deal brokered by
nationalists in 1991 left in power officials vitally interested in the
preservation of the previous political and economic system. A powerful
and entrenched opposition to change was thus built into the Ukrainian
political transition.

Ukraine's Constitution

It was not until 1996, and the settlement of a protracted political crisis, that
Ukraine adopted a new Constitution.[7] However, the constant battles over
authority between the President, Prime Minister, and Parliament (the
Verkhovna Rada) that preceded the adoption of the Constitution have not
abated. In fact, the new Constitution has merely reinforced and
institutionalized conflict at the apex of political power. Ostensibly a
French semipresidentialist system, in which the Prime Minister and
President share executive authority, the Ukrainian Constitution operates in
practice like a fitful authoritarian regime. The President has very broad
powers, including control over the Government.[8] The Prime Minister is
not selected from the party leaders in the Rada but, rather, is an outside
official confirmed by the Rada upon nomination by the President. And
because the legislature has little say in the formation of the Government,
its acquiescence or cooperation in the development of policies is not easily
obtained. Add to this too many fractious and underdeveloped political
parties, and you get peculiar constitutional architecture that aggravates the
disputes inherent in ideological, regional, and cultural differences in
Ukraine.[9] The fact that there is no democratic way of resolving these
disputes (both the President and the Rada are elected directly by the
population) tends to escalate political confrontations in Ukraine.

There have been two post-Soviet Parliaments in Ukraine, both dominated
by socialists and neither capable of forming coalitions. This fragmentation
of the legislative assembly is as much the consequence of ideological
differences as it is of the inchoate party system.[10] For a variety of
historical, political, and institutional reasons, organized political parties
have played only a minor role in postindependence Ukrainian politics,
although that role seems to be increasing under the new electoral law. The
1994 Rada was elected in 450 single-member districts, according to a
majoritarian electoral rule. The result was a large number of independents
in the Rada. For the 1998 elections, the electoral law was changed to a
mixed plurality/proportional representation system, in which 225 members
were elected in single-member districts, and 225 were elected on the basis
of party lists. The new law was intended to strengthen parties and add
coherence to the Rada, but no party in the Rada commands a majority or is
able consistently to put forward a program that can win the support, or
compel the acquiescence, of the President.

Like its Soviet predecessor, Ukraine remains a unitary state under the 1996
Constitution (article 132). There are three tiers of government: national,
regional, and local (which includes cities, city and rural districts, and
villages and rural settlements). Regional (oblast) and local (raion)
governments are subordinated to higher level governments in virtually
every respect (article 118). The intergovernmental structure remains,
formally, a strict hierarchy. The unitary state is also reflected in the budget
structure of Ukraine, which mirrors the governmental structure. The
budgets of lower level governments are essentially "nested" within the
budgets of their corresponding higher level governments. At the same
time, those departments of regional and local governments that still double
as components of central ministries (also known as dual subordination)
normally receive a large part of their budgets (especially the salary
component) directly from the ministry. This pattern applied, for example,
to regional police departments, which remained part of the national
Ministry of Internal Affairs. Overall, intergovernmental fiscal relations in
post-Soviet Ukraine are marked by a high degree of revenue dependency
and are reminiscent of centralized fiscal management under the Soviet
system.

Ukraine's Weak State and the Problem of Economic Reform

Although a 1990 Deutsche Bank report judged Ukraine the most
promising post-Soviet economy, Ukraine has been a financial disaster
since 1991. The first 3 years of independence were accompanied by
hyperinflation, and between 1991 and 1998, Ukraine's real gross domestic
product (GDP) declined by 63 percent (compared with slightly more than
40 percent in Russia). Among the postsocialist countries, only Albania and
Turkmenistan have suffered more severe downturns. Virtually no sector or
industry has escaped a deep and broad depression. Although many aspects
of macroeconomic stabilization were achieved after 1994, including the
introduction of a new currency (the Hryvnia) in 1996, the prospects for
recovery soon were bleak. 
Most economic indicators and international authorities paint a dire picture 
for Ukraine. In 1996, the World Bank categorized Ukraine as among the 
group 4, or slow reform, countries. In 1997, the World Economic Forum 
ranked Ukraine as the 52d of 53 countries in overall competitiveness in its 
Global Competitiveness Report. And in 1998, the Heritage
Foundation-Wall 
Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom ranked Ukraine as the 125th 
of 156 countries, labeling Ukraine as among the "mostly unfree"
economies 
of the world. Industrial investment (both domestically and from abroad) 
remains low, despite lower inflation and a more stable currency. Since
1995, 
Ukraine has become dependent on massive infusions of capital from
multilateral
lending institutions, particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
to prop up its economy.

For the average Ukrainian, the consequences of the economic collapse
have been devastating, even if difficult to quantify. Hyperinflation ruined
the savings of the most defenseless sectors of the population, especially
pensioners and the unemployed. Official unemployment rates are still
approximately 3 percent, although this is not an accurate measure. Many
workers have been placed on administrative leave, or are officially listed
as employed but paid as part-time workers or not at all. In March 1993,
inspections of 6,900 enterprises conducted by the State Center of
Employment revealed that nearly 572,000 of the 3.9 million workers, or
14.6 percent, were on long-term leave. In certain regions of Ukraine and
branches of industry at that time, more than 44 percent of workers were
compelled to take leave, which resulted in levels of hidden unemployment
reaching 58 percent. Recent estimates place the number of hidden
unemployed at close to 3.5 million. Many of these workers have turned to
"shadow activities" for their sustenance. Registered unemployment grew
from 162,000 in January 1996 to 351,100 in January 1997, before reaching
1,052,000 by July 1998. The International Labour Organization (ILO),
however, estimated actual unemployment levels at closer to 9.8 percent, or
three times the official rate. The situation is so dire that many Ukrainians
go to Russia as guest workers. As in the cases of other countries
undergoing such profound socioeconomic collapses, these conditions are
criminogenic, a topic explored in detail in chapter 2.

Despite the extreme centralization of executive authority in Ukraine, and
the constitutional right to rule by decree, the President has not been
effective at governing or reforming the economy. Leonid Kuchma, the
former Prime Minister and current President, has been much more reform
minded than his predecessor Leonid Krav-chuk and both Parliaments, but
he has not taken many necessary steps for economic recovery and has been
unable to implement his programs or laws. The most striking policy
failures have been in the areas of large-scale privatization (especially in
the agricultural sector), corporate restructuring, enterprise governance, and
creation of an investor-friendly business climate. Part of this policy failure
stems from the state's own internal political divisions and the difficulty of
simultaneously undergoing a fundamental political and economic
transition. But much of the incapacity of government is the result of the
state's internal institutional weaknesses and illegitimacy. The government
simply has difficulty commanding the loyalty of its subjects. It cannot
predictably or reliably perform the most basic function of government:
collecting taxes. It also has trouble obtaining the obedience of its own civil
servants, as the discussion of corruption in chapters 2 and 3 will show. In
this sense, Ukraine is a quintessential case of what political scientists call a
"weak state."[11]

Advisers from the IMF and World Bank have strongly emphasized the
need for improvement in tax collection, and draconian measures have been
attempted. In the summer of 1998, for example, former Prime Minister
Valery Pustovoitenko summoned several hundred prominent businessmen
to a resort outside Kyiv, ostensibly for economic consultations. He then
held the businessmen hostage in the Maryinskyi palace, releasing them
only after they paid their taxes. While these tactics sent a message about
the state's need for revenue, the government has not made significant
improvements in tax collection. This chronic revenue crisis in Ukraine has
had deleterious consequences for law and order and the reform of the
criminal justice system, which is discussed in chapter 3. It has also
thwarted economic reform.

The sources of economic decay and decline lie in three areas. First,
although Ukraine is rich in natural resources, most of these were depleted
during the Soviet period. Extraction costs in many cases exceed the
prospective sales prices. Second, the Soviet Union left Ukraine with an
economic base that was not viable in market terms. In particular, eastern
Ukraine has enormous mining and metallurgy concerns that can neither be
made profitable nor shut down without making redundant a substantial
percentage of the workforce. No realistic transition strategy has been
developed to phase out these industries. Third, Ukraine is highly
dependent on Russia for its energy and has suffered a huge decline in
terms of trade in the shift to world market prices: Ukraine's energy import
costs have increased far more than the prices of its industrial and
agricultural exports. Ukrainians with connections to Russian exporters
have taken advantage of the price differentials and their administrative
authority to reap huge illegal profits from this import business.

Together with these systemic problems, the weakness of the Ukrainian
state has facilitated the expansion of a shadow, or unofficial, economy.
The shadow economy was estimated at 60 percent of total real gross
domestic product (GDP) in 1996.[12] Its growth has been swift. As early
as 1992, a survey of 223 private firms found that 54 percent of their
aggregate profit was derived from shadow activities. In 1994, a poll of 200
companies operating with foreign capital revealed that 55 percent of their
business was involved with the shadow economy. By 1997, approximately 
40 percent of all currency was circulating outside the official banking
system.[13] A significant proportion of the labor force is, therefore, at
least partially, if not wholly, employed in shadow activities. In a strict
sense, all of this activity is illegal, and some, as discussed in chapter 2, is
closely linked to the criminal world.

The shadow economy, it should be emphasized, is at least partly
attributable to excessive state regulation, which businesses have a hard
time distinguishing from racketeering. The byzantine tax system, onerous
business registration requirements, and complex (and often contradictory)
regulatory rules under which all legitimate economic interests must
operate place in the hands of underpaid and overworked administrators
innumerable opportunities for using public office for private gain. More
than 1,000 types of commercial activity are subject to licensing.
Twenty-five separate state agencies have the right to audit businesses, and
the average number of such annual checks has risen from 34 to 296.
Ukrainian enterprises spend the equivalent of an estimated 3 percent of
GDP on regulatory compliance each year. All of these rules and
regulations have
the effect of providing an army of state inspectors the power to shut down
any 
enterprise in the country, unless a bribe is paid. To some extent, the state 
itself has forced firms into the shadows by making legitimate and
profitable 
business nearly impossible.

Many of the Government's seemingly irrational economic policies also
provide incentives and opportunities for crime and corruption. For
example, the combination of hyperinflation and massive subsidized state
loans enabled those with access to state loans to borrow money from the
Government, convert the money to U.S. dollars, and then, after watching
the currency lose much of its value, convert only a portion of the dollars
back into local currency to pay off the loan, pocketing the remainder.
Similarly, the lack of privatization of enterprises gives state managers the
ability to sell their assets at grossly undervalued prices in return for a cash
side-payment, often deposited in a foreign bank account. Barter trade,
prompted by currency instability, made such transactions easier to hide by
making prices difficult to monitor. Thus, former Prime Minister Pavlo
Lazarenko (currently in a Federal prison facing criminal charges in both
the United States and Switzerland) was reportedly able to make a fortune
when he was able to use his control of state petroleum firms to buy gas at
the subsidized rate, sell it at world market prices, and deposit the profits in
Swiss banks.[14]

The Outlook: After the Presidential Elections

In most modern democracies, the completion of a presidential election
usually signals the termination of open political conflict. Political foes
return to their customary seats to conduct politics as usual. This does not
occur in Ukraine. Far from settling and restructuring relations between
government and opposition, the reelection of President Kuchma in
October 1999 unleashed a new round of very public and intensely partisan
political battles. In 2000, the President and the Rada were involved in
what appeared to be irreconcilable institutional conflict.

Two months after his election victory, Kuchma proposed a referendum on
constitutional changes to extend the power of the president of Ukraine. He
claimed that the current Constitution gives insufficient power to the
President and thereby stymies policy initiatives, especially economic
reform. Over the objection of the Council of Europe, which was alarmed
by the authoritarian implications of a further extension of presidential
prerogative, Kuchma endeavored to put to the people six propositions: 

o Should the President be allowed to dissolve the Rada if the present
referendum shows that the public lacks confidence in the current
legislature?

o Should constitutional changes be made by referendum?

o Should the President have the right to dismiss the Rada if, within 1
month, it is unable to form a permanent parliamentary majority, or
approve the state budget within 3 months from the moment it is submitted
by the Cabinet of Ministers?

o Should the immunity of Rada deputies be withdrawn?

o Should the number of deputies be decreased from 450 to 300?

o Should the Rada be a bicameral legislature instead of a unicameral
body?

Ukraine's Constitutional Court disallowed the first two questions, but on
April 16, 2000, nearly four-fifths of the population voted overwhelmingly
in favor of the four remaining propositions.[15]

Despite the mandate given to Kuchma by the plebiscite, the referendum
has not solved this latest constitutional crisis. Kuchma lacks the support of
the two-thirds of the deputies in the Rada required to introduce changes to
the Constitution. And although the Constitutional Court has reminded the
Rada that the results of the referendum are obligatory, the legislature
remains defiant. It is not clear how Ukraine will extract itself from this
impasse. The worst, but by no means least unlikely, scenario is that the
President will dissolve the Rada and declare the Constitution changed by
decree. The best, or at least most peaceful, scenario is that, through the
politics of compromise and clientelism, Kuchma can engineer more
modest legislative and constitutional changes.

Whatever form the resolution of the crisis takes, state policy on corruption
and organized crime is unlikely to change dramatically. The intrigue of
stripping deputies of their parliamentary immunity will likely engulf, and
possibly disfigure, any new policy or legislation directed toward the fight
against corruption and organized crime. Neither current nor future deputies
are likely to expose themselves and their constituencies to the scrutiny of
the law enforcement agencies, which support the President in this
showdown. In short, the current political environment is not conducive to
bold new anticrime measures. Even if the current President had a coherent
reformist policy agenda, little of it could be achieved in this highly
confrontational political environment. International organizations and
foreign assistance projects must take this into consideration as they
endeavor to lobby for changes in Ukrainian law enforcement practices.

---------------------------

Notes

1. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, "The Premature Partnership," Foreign Affairs 73
(2) (March-April 1994): 80.

2. Wolczuk, Kataryna, "The Politics of Constitution Making in Ukraine,"
in Contemporary Ukraine: Dynamics of Post-Soviet Transformation, ed.
Taras Kuzio, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998: 118-38.

3. For a lengthy discussion of these regional and ethnic divisions, see
Wilson, Andrew, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

4. For a more detailed account of these developments, see Garnett,
Sherman, Keystone in the Arch, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 1997.

5. According to Alexander Motyl, "[V]irtually no one in or out of the
government was prepared for independence or its aftermath." Motyl,
Alexander, Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine After Totalitarianism,
New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993: 50, 75.

6. Polokhalo, Volodymyr, "The Neo-Totalitarian Transformations of
Post-Communist Power in Ukraine," Politychna Dumka/Political Thought,
no. 3 (1994): 133-4.

7. For an account of the constitutional impasse in 1995, see Wolczuk,
Kataryna, "The Politics of Constitution Making in Ukraine" (see note 2).

8. The President thus effectively appoints the Prime Minister, who, in turn,
directs the Cabinet of Ministers (article 106). The President also has the
authority to appoint certain individual ministers. He has veto power over
legislation, although there is provision for a parliamentary override. He
can still overturn acts taken by the Cabinet of Ministers, but it is not clear
that he can revoke the actions taken by individual ministries unless they
violate the Constitution. The President also appoints the heads of local
state administrations upon the recommendation of the Cabinet of
Ministers. 

9. For an analysis of the problems of semipresidentialism in Ukraine, see
Wilson, Andrew, "Ukraine," in Postcommunist Presidents, ed. Ray Taras,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 67-105. For a description
of similar constitutional confrontations in Russia, see Huskey, Eugene,
Presidential Power in Russia, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

10. According to Alexander Motyl, "The absence of an institutionalized
party system means that . . . effective parliamentary rule is virtually
impossible." Motyl, Alexander, Dilemmas of Independence (see note 5):
50.

11. For an indepth study of state weakness in Ukraine, see D'Anieri, Paul,
Robert Kravchuk, and Taras Kuzio, Politics and Society in Ukraine,
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999: 90-140.

12. See Razumkov, et al., "Report of the Ukrainian Center for Economic
and Political Studies: The Shadow Economy and Organized Crime in
Ukraine" in Zerkalo nedeli Kyiv, February 10, 1996: 16, as translated from
the Russian in FBIS-SOV-96-094-S.

13. Paskhaver, Alexander, "Ukraine's Shadow Economy During the Period
of Transition," The Ukrainian Economic Monitor 3 (6) (13) (June 1996):
6-11.

14. In 1998, Pavlo Lazarenko fled Ukraine to the United States before he
could be charged with criminal corruption. However, when Switzerland
charged him with money laundering in 1999, he was arrested in the United
States pending an extradition hearing. In May 2000, the U.S. Government
also indicted Lazarenko on charges of money laundering, for which he is
to face trial in 2001. In the fall of 2000, Lazarenko pleaded guilty to the
Swiss charges and agreed to return some $6 million to the government of
Ukraine. The request for extradition to Switzerland was dropped.

15. See, for example, the coverage of the referendum results in the
electronic RFE/RL Newsline, 4 (77), part 2 (April 18, 2000).

---------------------------

Crime and Criminality in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Between 1989 and 1999, Ukraine, like other former Soviet republics,
experienced a dramatic (approximately 2.5-fold) surge in its overall rate of
recorded crime.[1] This increase should come as no surprise, for during
this time the collapse of an entire economic system, enfeeblement of the
state and its capacity to enforce its laws, and radical changes in social
structure occurred.

Two stories define the organization of this chapter. The first concerns
crime as a whole, especially ordinary crime, such as property crime, and
crimes of violence. This is where the major surge in activity (and in police
registration of activity) occurred. As discussed later, the really dramatic
change occurred not in crimes of violence but, rather, in simple theft. On
one hand, the rise in theft almost certainly reflects the changes in social
structure, whether reflected in class differences, social disorganization, or
social strain. On the other hand, the Soviet rates of property crime were so
low compared with those in Western European countries that one might
qualify the story as normalization.

The other big story was the criminalization of the economy; that is,
development of economic activities of organized crime (such as trade in
narcotics) and the symbiotic relationship between the criminal world and
much of private business. These businesses have come to rely upon
criminal organizations for protection and also face strong incentives to
evade government taxation. Then there is the involvement of government
officials as participants more than as combatants of these activities, and
the spread of what is seen as corruption. There is, to be sure, some overlap
between the worlds of ordinary and business-related crime, especially if
one defines organized criminal groups loosely. But, for purposes of
analysis, the distinction remains useful.

In examining these stories, we will pay close attention to what is
distinctive about the Ukrainian situation, in both reality and perception.
The leading local commentators on crime in Ukraine emphasize that,
notwithstanding the growth of crime, Ukraine continues to have a much
lower rate of recorded crime than the Russian Federation, still 40 percent
less in 1995.[2] Comparisons with other post-Soviet republics suggest that
it is Russia that is the outlier; but explaining this dramatic difference
contributes to better understanding Ukrainian realities.[3] Beyond reality
there is the matter of perception. In the writings of both criminologists and
other commentators in Ukraine, one encounters a strain of pessimism that
may or may not be warranted. This pessimism takes the form of assertions
that Ukrainian officials are more corrupt than their Russian counterparts,
or that the dark figure of crime (the crimes unknown to or unrecorded by
the police) is larger in Ukraine.[4] Ultimately, these perceptions may
matter more than the reality behind them.

Finally, in analyzing crime trends in Ukraine, this chapter relies on official
data on crimes registered by the police. This is the main indicator of
criminality used by Ukrainian criminologists and law enforcement
officials alike. However, it is not the same as crimes reported to the police,
much less the amount of crime actually committed. As chapter 3 explains,
in the late Soviet period the police in Ukraine failed to register roughly
one-third of the crimes reported to them, and this share increased during
the post-Soviet period. Although many complaints to the police did not
withstand scrutiny, police were also known to refuse to register "criminal
manifestations" for other reasons, such as the unlikelihood of solving the
case. Understanding the meaning of criminal statistics in any country
during any epoch requires coming to terms with the incentives that shape
the recording practices of the police, and this is especially so in late Soviet
and post-Soviet Ukraine. In short, analysts and casual observers alike must
treat Ukrainian statistics with caution. One must be especially careful not
to make large inferences from relatively small changes in the dynamics of
crime. This chapter, however, focuses mainly on large-scale or macrolevel
changes in crimes registered by the police, changes that reflect underlying
realities, notwithstanding variations in citizen reporting and police
registration of crimes. We will indicate and discuss the situations in which
these practices seem to shape or distort the data in major ways (for
example, in statistics on organized crime).

Patterns of Criminality and Ordinary Crime

Although the great surge in crimes committed and registered in Ukraine
occurred from 1989 to 1995, there had been a pattern of gradual increase
from the mid-1960s. The trend accelerated in the years from 1978 to 1983,
then briefly stabilized in the mid-1980s and even declined in 1987 and
1988 as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev's antialcohol campaign. Overall,
between 1972 and 1989, rates of recorded crime more than doubled.
Explaining this change requires a knowledge of history. In part, the
increase reflected the growing urbanization of Ukraine (and the U.S.S.R.) -
-the percentage of citizens living in urban areas in the U.S.S.R. grew from
56 percent in 1970 to 66 percent in 1989--but even more it resulted from
the declining influence of factors that had kept crime rates artificially low
in previous decades.

At least four factors combined from the 1930s through the first half of the
1960s to keep crime rates in the U.S.S.R. and Ukraine low, despite
remarkably high rates of urbanization. One factor involved shifts in the
scope of the criminal law, especially periodic exercises in
decriminalization. Thus, in the mid-1920s, public drunkenness and petty
theft were shifted to administrative jurisdiction. Decriminalization came in
enforcement practice as well as in law; in the wake of Joseph Stalin's harsh
decrees on theft in 1947, police for the most part stopped prosecuting
juvenile offenders for thefts.[5] 

A second factor involved demographic changes, as collectivization and
World War II artificially reduced the number of young men (the main
crime-committing group) in the population. This factor had a major impact
in the 1950s. When a new generation of youth began to influence crime
rates in the early 1960s, some of the responsibility for addressing this issue
was shifted to juvenile affairs commissions and the offenses were
effectively decriminalized.[6] 

A third factor influencing crime rates was the change in property relations
and in patterns of production that occurred in the early 1930s. The decline
in private property and the amount and attractiveness of consumer goods
led to a corresponding decline in theft of private property. Although
employee theft of state property became an epidemic, it was treated as an
administrative offense until 1940 and, once criminalized, was often
ignored.[7] Police methods of recording crimes became a fourth factor.
For much of Soviet history, police were evaluated on the basis of rates of
solving crimes (raskryvaemost), which encouraged them not to register
crime reports, especially thefts, where there were no obvious suspects. At
times, police were known to keep a separate parallel record of "criminal
manifestations," which were not entered in official statistics.[8]

The period from 1965 to 1988 witnessed a change in the conditions that
had suppressed crime rates. First, after decades of disturbance some
demographic normality was achieved. Second, no further significant
decriminalization occurred; in fact, a series of police campaigns
encouraged the qualification of more petty offenses as criminal. Third, and
most important, the Soviet economy finally began producing a significant
amount of goods worth stealing. As the Brezhnev government adopted a
policy of increasing production of various consumer durables, a parallel or
shadow economy (sometimes called the second economy) emerged to
facilitate production and distribution of consumer goods. The shadow
economy was itself a criminogenic phenomenon involving illegal
production and trade, bribery of officials, misappropriation of supplies,
and the use of private protection services. This economy also affected
ordinary crime, providing more opportunities for property crime and
involving a large part of the population in law-avoidance activities that
eroded its already low respect for law.[9] As exhibit 2.1 shows, these
factors contributed to a fairly steady increase in the total number of
registered crimes in Ukraine during this period.

In 1989, the number of registered crimes in Ukraine rose by 32.7 percent
over the previous year, from 242,974 to 322,340, which requires special
explanation. In 1989, the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Internal Affairs called for a
change in police registration practices, instructing police agencies to
include all reported crimes (and promising to disregard the resultant low
rates of detection). The purpose of this artificially generated crime wave
became obvious when police officials publicized the data, hoping to
generate a panic: The inflated numbers were used to attract more resources
for the police.[10]

Although the change in police reporting explains a portion of the 1989
crime wave, there is reason to believe that there was an actual increase as
well. That year represented the beginning of the end of the Soviet
economy, the year when suppressed inflation led to a shortage of goods in
the main economy, as the bulk of goods were produced in and distributed
through the shadow economy. The real prices necessary to acquire scarce
goods in the second economy became excessively high, especially when
members of the public resorted to hoarding. It is reasonable, then, to
suppose that the sudden new impoverishment of part of the public in 1989
led to a real surge in property crimes such as theft. Also, as exhibit 2.2
shows, in Ukraine between 1990 and 1995, the amount of recorded crime
increased at an annual average rate of 12 percent, reaching its peak of
641,860 in 1995.

Each of the next 3 years registered a decrease in the order of 3 to 4 percent
per annum. The most likely explanation for this decrease is the changes in
police practice involving more qualification of less serious incidents as
administrative, rather than criminal, offenses (a quiet decriminalization)
and an increasing tendency not to record incidents with no suspects, owing
to a concern about solution rates).[11] According to Genady Udovenko, a
former presidential candidate and the current Chairman of the Human
Rights Committee of the Ukrainian legislature, the decline in reported
crime for 1997 was "artificial."[12]

Property crime

The surge in recorded crime between 1989 and 1993 reflected a major
change in the structure of crime. The number of property crimes, such as
theft, robbery, swindling, and extortion, and economic crimes, such as
bribery, counterfeiting, and trading in narcotics, grew much faster than
crimes of violence, especially murder, serious assault, and hooliganism.
The result was that the percentage of crimes against property rose from a
one-third to a two-thirds share of all crime, while the percentage of violent
crimes fell from two-thirds to one-third.[13] Although a preponderance of
crimes with "mercenary motives" is normal in times of economic decline,
the shift in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states came quickly.

As exhibit 2.3 shows, by 1993, theft of private property had risen more
than 13-fold from its 1972 level of 14,798 to 194,002; this figure reached
208,544 in 1995 before leveling out in 1998 at 184,760. At the same time,
incidents of theft of state and collective property rose 9.4-fold, from
12,235 in 1972 to 115,987 in 1993, its peak before declining to 84,320 in
1998 (reflecting in part the progress of privatization). In addition, there is
reason to suppose that the dark figure for these offenses was especially
high: Police were at all times reluctant to record thefts that had no chance
of solution, and the public, losing faith in law enforcement's capacity and
willingness to investigate thefts, reported these occurrences with
decreasing frequency.[14]

Apartments and warehouses represented the most common locations for
stealing, with thieves favoring jewelry, antiques, imported electronic
goods, and hard currency. At the same time, the 1990s saw a revival of
thefts of chickens and raids on vegetable gardens, acts reminiscent of the
famine of 1947. Approximately half the thefts were committed by groups
of offenders, often professional but not usually high-level units of
organized crime. (The variety of organized groups will be discussed later
in greater detail.) Not surprisingly, juveniles bore responsibility for more
than 33 percent of thefts, and women committed 13 percent. More than 40
percent of apprehended thieves had criminal records, mostly for previous
thefts.[15]

A considerable proportion of thefts was committed by single, unemployed
persons in their twenties, often without fixed addresses. In Russia such
"floaters" were well represented among thieves and constituted one reason
for the overuse of pretrial detention and consequent prison overcrowding.
Additional research could determine whether Ukraine faced a similar
problem.

Despite the large amount of theft in Ukraine, there have been almost no
studies about this type of crime.[16] Such studies would be helpful in
learning about the roots of theft: for example, what portion reflected
poverty or social strain, and what portion represented the work of
professional criminals taking advantage of an underpoliced and
undercontrolled environment.

Violent crime

Crimes of violence also experienced a surge from 1988 to 1995, though at
a lesser rate than property crimes. As exhibit 2.4 shows, incidents of
intentional assault rose from 4,241 in 1988 (versus 2,218 in 1972) to 8,800
in 1995. Incidents of robbery grew from 1,694 in 1988 (versus 834 in
1972) to 4,998 in 1994. Also, incidents of intentional murder rose from
2,016 in 1988 (versus 1,577 in 1972) to 4,896 in 1996. In contrast,
incidents of rape (including attempted) reached a high point in 1989 at
2,736 (versus 1,564 in 1972), then declined to 1,334 in 1998. As a result,
the percentage of rape convicts among the population of labor colonies
declined from 9.8 percent in 1991 to 3.4 percent in 1998.[17]

What accounts for the marked growth in recorded violent crime for this
period? Although criminologists in Ukraine emphasize the novel aspects
of the rise in murders, such as the presence of contract murders (210 in
1995) and the rise in the use of guns (from 15 to 16 percent of murders in
the 1980s to 20 percent in 1993, with handguns replacing hunting
weapons), the bulk of murders and the largest share of the increased
number of murders remained impulse murders, committed among family,
neighbors, and friends while under the influence of alcohol. In 1995, 62.2
percent of murders involved offender intoxication (virtually the same as in
the 1960s); only 21 percent of victims were unknown to their
assailant.[18] One may conclude, therefore, that the rise in murders (and
also assaults) during the past decade reflected the stresses of
unemployment and impoverishment and the accompanying increase in
alcohol consumption far more than the growth of organized crime.

The sharp decline in reported rapes during the 1990s deserves further
exploration. To be sure, the inevitable reluctance of victims to make
reports to the police ensures a high level of latency, and it was possible
that, in the 1990s, the inexperienced and underequipped persons who filled
the ranks of ordinary police officers had little sympathy with or respect for
the claims of female victims. However, it is doubtful that changes in either
police conduct or public attitudes toward the police could explain the drop
in recorded rapes in 1998 to less than the 1972 level. In Russia there was
also a decline in rape data between 1990 and 1998, but it was not as
dramatic. Unfortunately, the criminological characteristics of reported
rapes yield few clues. In 1995, 66 percent of attempted rapes in Ukraine
were committed by persons 21 years of age and younger, approximately
nearly 66 percent of offenders and 40 percent of the victims were
intoxicated, and many of the incidents resulted from
misunderstandings.[19] More sophisticated and focused research is needed
on both the character and the processing of violent crimes against women.

Specific offender groups: Women, juveniles, recidivists, and migrants

The period from 1989 to 1999 also witnessed changes in the relative
contribution to crime of four special groups of offenders. First, the share of
reported crimes in Ukraine committed by women grew noticeably in the
1990s, rising from 13.6 percent in 1993 to 17.5 percent in 1996 (compared
with 14.9 percent in Russia in 1995). However, in 1972, women
represented 20.7 percent of offenders in Ukraine. To some extent, the
share of crime committed by women is correlated with economic factors.
For example, by 1980, the proportion of all crime committed by women
had declined again to 15 percent; in 1985 and 1986 (years characterized by
marked shortages in consumer goods), it rose sharply, to 22 and 26
percent, respectively, and it again rose in the mid-1990s (years
characterized by hyperinflation). In the 1990s, women were involved
mainly in crimes such as theft and cheating customers and suppliers, but,
during the past 5 years, women were increasingly implicated in
narcotics-related offenses and violent crimes, usually associated with
alcohol use.[20]

Second, the number of juveniles involved in criminal activity, as well as
the number of young persons, ages 18 to 24, grew during the years 1979 to
1993 (the coefficients for juveniles more than doubled, and for young
persons grew by 88.2 percent), while the coefficient for persons 25 years
or older increased by 50 percent. Starting in 1993, however, the share of
juveniles and young persons involved in criminal activity began to drop
and that of older offenders began to rise, perhaps reflecting demographic
factors. Although juveniles ages 14 to 17 represented 13 percent of
identified offenders in Ukraine in 1993, that share had dropped to 8.6
percent by 1998. In Russia, the share of juvenile offenders also declined,
falling from 17 percent in 1991 to 12 percent in 1995.

Like juvenile delinquents everywhere, Ukrainian youth committed mainly
thefts (from apartments or of automobiles), operated in groups (gangs),
and were motivated more by a desire to achieve prestige among their peers
than by mercenary considerations.[21] What may have distinguished
young offenders in Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union generally, from
their counterparts in the West was the likelihood that they would mature
into adult offenders. This was because the proliferation of criminal groups,
including those that were professional and organized, ensured
opportunities for criminal careers, as organized crime actively recruits
young criminals.[22] At the same time, the predominant moral code
among young persons in the former Soviet Union emphasizes the pursuit 
of economic gain at any cost, and the heroes of youth are, if not organized
crime
members, at least the "new Ukrainians" or "new Russians"--most of whom
are assumed to have made their fortunes through illicit means. It would be
useful to determine whether an unusually large share of Ukrainian young
offenders become adult criminals, possibly through a cohort study.

Third, the recidivism rate of persons accused by the police (almost all of
whom would be convicted) in Ukraine between 1990 and 1993 averaged
18 percent, approximately 3 to 4 percent below that recorded in Russia;
this rate, however, fell during the mid-1990s to approximately 15
percent.[23] Women and civil servants convicted of job-related crimes
committed new offenses much less frequently, while persons convicted of
theft, swindling, and trade crimes reoffended more often than the gross
averages. As of 1993, 30 percent of repeat offenders committed a new
crime within 3 years of release from confinement; 66 percent committed
one within 5 years. Every seventh recidivist had been convicted of three or
more offenses, and the bulk of these persons had been designated by the
court as especially dangerous recidivists. Receiving this designation for
either convictions of two very dangerous crimes or two moderately serious
crimes and one minor one (all according to a complicated formula) meant
a loss of eligibility for early release and confinement in a "special regime"
labor colony.[24]

Fourth, another criminogenic group within the population of all
post-Soviet countries is migrants. In Russia, the country with the largest
migrant population, newcomers accounted for 8 percent of recorded crime
in 1995; data for the city of Moscow place the amount of migrant crime at
33 percent. Although Ukraine does not receive as many migrants as
Russia, it remains a recipient, with some of its southeastern regions
receiving large numbers of newcomers. According to official data, in
addition to legal refugees and resettlers, Ukraine in the 1990s received
some 50,000 illegal migrants.[25] Research concerning the role of
migrants in either criminal activity in general or in specific areas of crime,
such as the shadow economy or illegal trade of narcotics or women, could
produce valuable insights.[26]

Explaining Patterns of Criminality

In using available data, this overview analysis of ordinary crime in
Ukraine has highlighted observable patterns and changes. It is also
possible to consider theoretical perspectives that offer explanations at a
higher level of analysis.

One of the oldest and most commonsense perspectives was offered a
century ago by Willem Bonger, who sought to demonstrate a correlation
between poverty and criminal activity. Parts of the Ukrainian population
are so poor that stealing is the only way to survive. Ironically, the original
Soviet leaders, after coming to power, were ready to treat the commission
of crimes out of need (iz-za nuzhdy) as a mitigating factor. Sympathy for
the downtrodden has long since left the criminal codes of the former
Soviet republics, but it may still be reflected in the practice of law
enforcement.[27] 

Most present-day Ukrainian crime can be seen as a reaction to social
strain. In his justly famous study of anomie, Robert K. Merton presented
crime as a positive (innovative) response to increases in strain caused by
the combination of relative deprivation, the permeation of society by a
single set of values (materialism), and the uneven distribution of legitimate
means of achieving them. Hence, strain causes anomie, which creates the
need for a response. The alternatives to crime--namely immigration,
resignation (such as alcoholism), or rebellion--Merton saw as having
worse consequences for the society involved.[28]

The late Soviet and post-Soviet experience, exemplified by Ukraine,
included a remarkable combination of the circumstances that produce
social strain. A sudden social differentiation emerged, in which a large
part of the population became impoverished and earned a small fraction of
the income earned by the wealthy. The society became enamored of the
values of material accumulation, and very few (at least in public view) had
access to legal ways of obtaining wealth.[29]

In the U.S.S.R. there were also structured inequalities, although nowhere
near as large or visible as those that emerged after its collapse. Both social
strain and its potential effects were muted by three important factors: The
presence of a welfare state (until the 1980s, at least the poorer parts of the
population were protected by a safety net); opportunity for social mobility
(the possibility to achieve success legally through obtaining higher
education and resulting job tracks); and social control (the presence not
only of police but also of strong families and community institutions
supporting a system of morality that was generally accepted).[30] Since
1989, the welfare state all but vanished in Ukraine (as well as Russia); the
easy paths to social mobility disappeared (only business pursuits seemed
promising); and both policing and the system of "Communist morality"
lost their effectiveness. Materialism supplanted any ideals or sense of what
was right supplied by Communist morality.

Advancing beyond the "strain" theory in an attempt to fathom the
criminogenic state of contemporary Ukraine, Elliott Currie has proposed
an amalgam called a "market society," which is likely to generate high
levels of violent crime.[31] A market society is one in which the principles
of the market are not confined only to some parts of the economy and are
not "appropriately buffered and restrained by other social institutions and
norms," but instead "come to suffuse the whole social fabric, and to
undercut and overwhelm other principles that have historically sustained
individuals, families, and communities." According to Currie, a market
society contains at least seven criminogenic mechanisms: "the progressive
destruction of livelihood; the growth of extremes of economic inequality
and material deprivation; the withdrawal of public services and supports . .
.; the erosion of informal and communal networks of . . . support . . .; the
spread of a materialistic, neglectful, and 'hard' culture; the unregulated
marketing of the technology of violence; and . . . the weakening of social
and political alternatives."

Currie's larger point is that the United States is the empirical referent for
the construct of a Darwinian society, and that Western advisers and East
European officials alike have erred in trying to bring precisely this kind of
capitalism to the post-Communist world. Perhaps they had no choice, at
least in countries of the former Soviet Union, where the welfare state had
already decayed and productive forces were too weak to support revival,
despite a flow of illegal financial gains from Russia and Ukraine in the
1990s that suggests otherwise. Avoidable or not, citizens of Ukraine and
Russia were forced to "sink or swim" in a society that was arguably more
Darwinian in nature than the United States, and this kind of society is
bound to generate much crime, both property and violent.

It may well be that post-Soviet countries have market societies and
unregulated, oligopolistic forms of a market economy precisely because of
the privatization of state resources, described by Steven Solnick as
"stealing the state," which brought wealth to many former officials,
criminal allies, and friends who remained in government.[32] The high
rates of ordinary crime, including theft and murder, may be seen as a
consequence of the creation of states dominated by the interests of a new
class of entrepreneurs and predators, whose pursuit of profit entails
another world of criminal activity-that of business and elite crime.

Ukrainian crime in comparative context

Understanding crime in Ukraine in a broader theoretical perspective is
important to the development of a vibrant and autonomous criminology in
that country (discussed in detail in chapter 4). But it is also important to
place Ukrainian crime in an appropriate comparative context, and
comparisons with Russia prove particularly insightful.

Although the increase in criminal activity in late- and post-Soviet Ukraine
was dramatic, the levels of recorded crime in Ukraine do not come close to
those in the Russian Federation. In 1993, for example, while Ukraine
recorded 1,032 crimes per 100,000 population (the crime coefficient), the
Russian Federation recorded 1,890. The difference between the two
countries was even greater for the population age 14 and older: 1,287
versus 2,344.[33] In addition, crime in Ukraine appears to be less violent
and lethal than in Russia. Although Ukraine's coefficient of murder
(reports of actual and attempted murders per 100,000 population) reached
9, the same level recorded by the United States in 1994, it lagged well
behind Russia at 22.[34] These data reflect longstanding differences
between the two republics: In 1972, Ukraine's crime coefficient was 283;
in 1971, Russia's was 536. With republics such as Moldavia and
Belorussia at each period having figures similar to Ukraine's, Russia was
the anomaly.[35]

But why? Why is there less recorded crime in Ukraine than in Russia?
This is an intriguing research question for at least three reasons. First, both
populations have similar age structures. In 1987, the last year for which
comparable data exist, the share of the population in the most
criminogenic age cohort (15 to 19) in both countries was 22 to 23 percent.
Second, the economic consequences of transition are generally viewed to
have been more severe in Ukraine than in Russia. Between 1991 and 1998,
real GDP in Ukraine declined by a cumulative 63 percent compared with
slightly more than 40 percent in Russia. Third, police practices in Russia
and Ukraine--including the rules and habits for recording crime as well as
their systems for administering criminal justice (discussed in chapter 3)--
remain remarkably similar today. In summation, the most convenient
criminological explanations (demography, economics, law enforcement)
do not help in understanding the large and longstanding differences in the
levels of recorded crime in Russia and Ukraine.

Another possible explanation of the disparate crime levels would be
differences in levels of urbanization. The western regions of Ukraine
(Zakarpatiia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Volynskaia, and Vinitskaia) are primarily
rural and have always had the lowest coefficients of recorded crime
(two-thirds lower than the coefficients recorded in the industrial east and
lower than any rural region in Russia). Much higher levels of crime were
found in the city of Kyiv, the Kharkiv region, and the Crimea (thought to
have the worst crime problem in 1999); and the highest coefficients of
crime were found in the eastern industrial regions of Dnipropetrovsk,
Donetsk, and Lugansk. However, these crime coefficients in 1993 reached
only 60 percent of the levels recorded in the industrial regions of Russia,
such as Sverdlovsk and Perm in the Urals.[36] Although levels of
urbanization explain differences in crime between regions of Ukraine, they
do not explain the systematic differences in levels of recorded crime
between Ukraine and Russia. According to the 1989 census, Ukraine was
no less urban than the Russian Federation (it was actually slightly more
urbanized, with 67 percent of its population living in cities as opposed to
66 percent in Russia). Moreover, the Ukrainian industrial regions
Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk had higher levels of urbanization (83 percent
and 90 percent, respectively) than did the Russian regions of Sverdlovsk
and Perm (77 percent and 87 percent). Nor did the age structure of the
population explain the difference. In 1987, the share of the population
between the ages of 15 and 29 (the most prone to crime) was 22.98 percent
in Russia and 22.11 percent in Ukraine, with generally similar gender
ratios.[37] 

The Russian Federation also had two criminogenic features largely lacking
in Ukraine. The first was a substantial frontier area, most notably the
Russian Far East, which had by far the highest crime rates in the entire
former Soviet Union (FSU). The second was the huge number of
transients not necessarily included in the population data. Even decades
ago, a portion of crimes committed in the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic (RSFSR) were the work of persons from other parts of
the U.S.S.R. After the breakup, Russia received millions of refugees,
resettlers, and "visitors" from various parts of the FSU as well as from
other countries. Many criminals apprehended for Russian crimes fell into
these categories.[38]

Further research is required to know whether this is an adequate
explanation of the crime gap between Ukraine and Russia. Indeed, there is
much room for more comparative research on crime rates in the former
Soviet Union. Studies of border regions in Ukraine and Russia (such as
Donetsk and Rostov, or Belgorod and Kharkiv), or even Ukraine and
Poland, would be particularly good devices for elucidating regional
variations and their causes. Such focused research, in which the variations
in law enforcement regimes--factors that typically haunt comparative
criminology--are minimal, could help solve the puzzle in crime rate
differentials.[39]

Business Crime and Crime in the Economy

When the U.S.S.R. collapsed in December 1991, the state-administered
economies of its republics, including Ukraine, were already in the process
of disintegration. Each successor state displayed its own particular blend
of asset takeover by private entities and depression of the state sector
economic activity by shadow economy competitors. Even before Ukraine
became independent, criminals had a major effect on the economy; after
the collapse, connections among new entrepreneurs (many of them former
officials), corrupt government officials, and criminals began to
flourish.[40]

To understand organized crime and corruption in post-Soviet Ukraine, it is
necessary to understand the shadow economy. This section begins with a
history of the shadow economy and privatization during the late Soviet
years and in post-Soviet Ukraine, and then moves to an analysis of
organized crime and patterns of corruption in independent Ukraine.

The long shadow of economic crime

Even in the Stalin period, the rigid formalities of Soviet economic
planning were matched by informal reliance of managers on their personal
connections, supply agents to gather inputs, and the extralegal
manufacture of and trade in spare parts. To move further, and trade or sell
additional supplementary production outside of the plan to other firms,
was a natural concomitant. After Stalin's death, as the economic effects of
World War II receded, there developed in the U.S.S.R. a demand for
consumer goods that was not met by the state sector. By the 1960s, a
parallel market began to emerge. The supply of goods for this market
came from a variety of sources, but at its core lay illegal production
undertaken mainly by the managers of state enterprises. This activity
involved a series of criminal offenses, starting with the misappropriation
of state assets (supplies and production process) and extending to payment
of bribes to superior officials and control agencies and, eventually,
protection money to criminal elements who demanded a piece of the
action. During the Brezhnev years (1964-82), the shadow economy
(known also as the second or parallel economy) grew to the point where it
represented, by conservative estimate, 15 percent of the country's
GDP.[41]

The economic restructuring during the Gorbachev period led quickly to
both an expansion of the shadow economy and criminalization of the
economy in general. The first law on cooperatives permitting private, or
cooperative, businesses (February 1987) made possible the legalization of
previously illegal businesses. At the same time, the laws allowed a variety
of officials the discretion to vet and destroy the new firms, providing an
ideal opportunity for bribes. Quickly, local government officials
recognized that they could force owners of successful businesses to make
them coowners. Simultaneously, in 1987, managers of large enterprises
gained unprecedented authority to control the production and distribution
processes, especially the prices charged. When the second law of
cooperatives (May 1988) allowed managers of large state-owned
enterprises to create spinoff firms, they responded by privatizing the best
of their firms' assets and selling production at inflated prices. Naturally,
these managers needed capital to purchase parts of their firms, and the
most available partners were persons who had amassed fortunes in the
second economy. This included criminals who, from 1986 to 1988, had
taken advantage of the restriction on state production of alcoholic
beverages to develop a staggeringly profitable underground business.[42]

By 1989, it had become so profitable to sell goods in the shadow economy
that managers of many more firms diverted production, and the shelves of
state-owned stores stood bare. As the leaders of the U.S.S.R. lost control
of the levers of the economy, they produced more legislation that enabled
officials to acquire state assets in legal ways. One of the most important
was the 1990 Law on Small Enterprises, which created an easy method for
the purchase of the most valuable parts of state firms at low prices, and
facilitated what Western observers called spontaneous privatization. That
process was further aided by legal entities known as kontserny, which
allowed the acquisition and quasi-privatization of even whole
ministries.[43]

Also in 1990 and 1991, opportunities for a variety of criminal activities
expanded, including using primary businesses to sell illegal goods (such as
arms and narcotics), and preying on the successes of others (extortion and
protection rackets). The growth of private and quasi-private business-legal,
illegal, or in between-also engendered the development of financial
institutions, some closely tied to capital with criminal origins. This
political economy gave rise to the now familiar partnerships involving
entrepreneurs (including some industrial officials and the "Young Turks"
of the Komsomol, or League of Young Communists), criminal
organizations (in part staffed by former security police officials), and
officials who remained in government. It is these triads, referred to by
Louise Shelley as the "criminal-political nexus," that most Ukrainians and
Russians understand as the "Mafia."[44]

Both the shadow economy and the business-crime connection have
continued and expanded in the post-Soviet space.[45] Although Russia has
encouraged further privatization of state assets (including less profitable
ones), Ukraine has moved more slowly, promoting mainly the
privatization of small and local business. At the same time, many of the
goods purchased by the public are imported, and the trading organizations
have strong criminal connections, especially along the borders. Also,
while Russia has engaged in a significant amount of legal and judicial
reform, Ukraine has done little. However, the relative inactivity of the
Ukrainian state may mean little: so far, the Russian effort has had little
impact on organized crime or corruption.

By all accounts, the shadow economies of most post-Soviet countries
expanded after independence; in the case of Ukraine, it grew to 48 percent
of GDP according to one 1994 estimate.[46] One reason is the attempt by
the new government to extract taxes from private firms. In Ukraine, as in
Russia, the various levels of government produced a tax burden for
business that was confiscatory and, when combined with obligatory
payments for protection (krysha, or a roof), inconsistent with the survival
of firms, let alone profit. As a result, most firms in Ukraine keep part of
their business outside their official books, including payments to
employees (working on the side) and income. Further complicating
attempts to sort out taxes is the large role of barter, even within the state
sector, which makes it difficult to determine incomes and profits.[47] The
reality is that the shadow economy and the official economy are
intertwined: the same firms operate in both legitimate and illegitimate
worlds. The shadow economy is, in short, "an organically connected
structural part of the legal economy."[48] President Kuchma reportedly
put it more bluntly, claiming that "literally all spheres [of the economy]
are criminalized and shadowized."[49]

The growth of the shadow economy in Ukraine is a symptom of the
government's loss of the capacity both to regulate the economy and to
raise taxes, and it demonstrates a systemic weakness of the Ukrainian state
to perform its basic functions. This vacuum of power and authority, in
turn, creates opportunities for criminal groups with various degrees of
organization, and encourages government officials to place private
interests ahead of serving the public interest. This symbiosis of corruption
and organized crime is described in the following section, and it is as
difficult for scholars to disentangle and analyze as it is for the state to
disrupt.

Organized Crime and Corruption

Any discussion of organized crime in post-Soviet states must start with
terminology, for neither "Mafia" nor "organized crime" is used
consistently.[50] The word "Mafia" is confusing because popularly it
refers to the entire web of persons who profit from the new economic
order--entrepreneurs, corrupt officials, and criminals (acting individually
or in concert)--while professionals usually reserve the term for organized
groups with the highest degree of internal structure and discipline,
something akin to that found in the Sicilian Mafia. Moreover, the term
"organized crime" has multiple meanings. Although some criminologists
in the FSU reserve this term for groups of criminals that resemble Western
Mafia organizations, both police ministries and other criminologists prefer
a broad rendering of the term, to include any and all groups that commit
crimes together.[51] Just as Stalin saw danger in any gathering of three or
even two persons to plan a crime, so latter-day authorities find it
convenient to treat all criminal groups as "organized."

What exactly is organized crime?

This indiscriminate treatment of all groups as organized causes confusion
about the scope and meaning of organized crime. For example, according
to police data, there has been virtually uncontrolled growth in the amount
of organized crime in the former Soviet Union. As exhibit 2.5 shows, in
Ukraine in 1991, the police recorded 260 organized criminal groups
(organizovannykh prestupnykh gruppirovok). By 1998, Ukraine reportedly
had 1,157 such groups, which were responsible for more than 9,000
crimes.[52] In Russia in 1991, there were 952 organized criminal groups,
but by 1997 there were more than 12,500 such groups, which were
responsible for some 25,000 crimes.[53]

These data lead to a number of troubling inferences. For example, it would
appear that organized crime in Ukraine is much more dangerous than in
Russia, for its groups are either larger or more organized. Although Russia
has nearly 10 times the number of groups as Ukraine, far fewer offenses
per group are committed there. While Russian organized crime groups
commit 2 to 3 offenses each, Ukrainian organized crime groups are
responsible for between 7 and 10 offenses each. The data also appear to
suggest that the "cancer" of organized crime has metastasized much faster
in Russia than in Ukraine. In 9 years, the number of groups in Russia grew
by 1,000 percent; in Ukraine, the rate of growth was half that. However, to
make any inferences based on these official data is exceedingly risky. The
numbers recorded here are the product of an amalgam of police reporting
and investigation statistics wholly unrelated to proper criminological or
legal categories. With the number of groups, for example, comes the
concept of exposure (vyiavlenie), which denotes that the police suspect the
groups to have been responsible for the crimes reported. The number of
"offenses," too, comes from police investigations, not prosecution charges
or court convictions.[54] They are, as one Western criminologist would
warn, "the product, not of a neutral fact-finding process, but of a
record-keeping process which is geared first and foremost to
organizational (primarily police) aims and needs."[55]

The police data on organized crime are not without merit, however. A
closer look at the numbers and, in particular, at the kinds of offenses
committed by groups suggests that most groups involved consist of small
gangs of extortionists, thieves, swindlers, or narcotics traders--that is,
anything but serious criminal cartels with international or interregional
ties.[56] In Ukraine, for example, simple theft (kradizhka) made up nearly
50 percent of the offenses committed by organized groups.[57] In Russia,
according to Viktor Luneev, approximately 40 percent of the offenses
committed by organized groups consisted of theft (krazha), and fully 80
percent consisted of what most criminologists would label ordinary
criminal conduct.[58] Examined from this perspective, the data suggest
that there may be a fairly short continuum between ordinary and organized
crime in Ukraine.

One leading Ukrainian criminologist supports this indiscriminate approach
to analyzing organized crime precisely because the smaller and less
sophisticated groups commit a large portion of the crimes that can be
uncovered. He finds wisdom in the observation of a popular Soviet (now
Russian) chronicler of organized crime, Stanislav Govorukhin, that "one
should not exaggerate the degree of order and organization in the criminal
world, since we have no order anywhere."[59]

Although there is a large kernel of truth in this claim, this rough approach
to criminological classification has at least three shortcomings. First, it
inhibits the development of policy-specific knowledge. It is difficult to
discern from the aggregate data which groups commit which offenses and,
thus, it is not clear how best to direct the attention of law enforcement
agencies. Second, the blanket approach to organized crime groups impedes
an understanding of the continuum between ordinary and organized crime.
Observers need to know much more about the relationships between the
groups, especially whether smaller gangs are employed or periodically
surrendered to the police by larger, better organized groups. Finally, the
indiscriminate treatment of all groups as organized crime obscures one of
the most important and yet poorly understood aspects of organized crime:
the structure of relations within groups. There are likely important
differences in the nature and evolution of authority and hierarchy both
within and among groups. More discriminating analyses and suppler
categories are needed to understand this variation.[60] 

There are two options for better organizing available information about
Ukrainian organized crime, each represented by two different approaches
to classification in post-Soviet criminology. One method is to classify
groups by the nature of offenses they commit; the other is to sort groups
by the nature of their organization. In both Ukraine and Russia, the latter
approach is dominant and clearly favored by a younger generation of
criminologists.[61] Contemporary criminology in Ukraine and Russia
makes organization the sine qua non of organized crime. Most scholars in
Ukraine and Russia distinguish three levels of organized criminal groups.
First, a base level, comprising the majority of gangs of extortionists,
thieves, swindlers, and narcotics traders, shows the rudimentary and
episodic nature of organization involved, and is akin to that found in
gangs, which are typically called groups (gruppirovki). Second, the middle
level involves relatively large formations with connections to authorities at
the regional level. This level is often called a criminal organization
(prestupnaia organizatsiia). Third, the high level has influence extending
to multiple regions of the country, often with international ties and
possessing means to launder money. This latter type is most often called a
network or association (soobshchestvo).[62]

Distinguishing these groups is helpful. We can see, for example, that few
criminal groups are in the high-level category. A recent study of Russian
organized crime concluded that there were only 350 authentic organized
criminal groups in the Western understanding of the term and, of these,
between 12 and 20 might be classified as major cartels.[63] This may be
true for Ukraine as well. According to official data from the Ministry of
Internal Affairs about groups exposed in 1997, only 3 percent had
international ties, 6 percent had interregional ties within the FSU, and 20
percent had interregional ties within Ukraine.[64]

However, the state of publicly available information about and analysis of
the various kinds of criminal groups in Ukraine remains weak. In
particular, serious study of the activities pursued by these various groups
is sorely needed.[65] A good deal could be learned about the nature and
activities of base- and even middle-level groups from studying groups that
have been exposed and prosecuted. The higher level groups involved in
international trade likely require some kind of ethnographic study,
however dangerous. Particularly useful would be studies that focus not on
particular crimes (for example, the number of persons apprehended and
charged), but on business activities of organized criminal groups in
particular sectors. Thus, one could imagine special studies of the role of
organized crime in Ukraine in organized prostitution; the narcotics trade;
the theft and sale of automobiles (luxury cars stolen in Europe and sold in
the former Soviet Union) and weapons; the acquisition and trade of
antiques, jewelry, and rare books; and banks and credit. Another area for
investigation is the system of "roofs" and the division of labor in
protection (extortion and rackets) between private security firms and
public bodies, including various police forces.[66] Finally, there is a
deficit of research into regional differences in the incidence of organized
crime and of the relations between region-specific groups.

This sector-specific mapping of organized crime or functionalist approach
to criminological analysis requires more empirical information than we
now possess. For many of these topics, bits of relevant data can be
reported, but, as a rule, this information raises more questions than it
answers. Here we present material on activities in Ukraine that are typical
of organized crime anywhere (prostitution, narcotics) and especially
activities characteristic of the FSU (extortion, financial sector activities).
This will begin to create a profile of organized crime in Ukraine and will
represent a first step toward understanding whether, and how, organized
crime in Ukraine is unique.

Due to the desperate state of the economy in the 1990s, Ukraine (and to a
lesser extent Russia) became a center of pornography and prostitution for
international consumption. According to an official report written in 1999,
more than 400,000 Ukrainian women under the age of 30 had left the
country, most to work in this field. According to the Ukrainian consulate
in Greece, 3,000 Ukrainians work as prostitutes in Athens and
Thessaloniki alone, and 6,000 more do the same in Turkey. A Dutch
researcher has reported that approximately 8,000 Ukrainian women work
as prostitutes in the Netherlands. It is unclear how many of these women
came to this work knowingly and voluntarily; better educated than
prostitutes from other countries, many of those from Ukraine and Russia
were initially promised clerical or hotel positions. Typically, women who
thought they were traveling voluntarily were later forced into prostitution
when their benefactors took away their passports and confined them. In
this way, Ukrainian women have joined those from other poor countries as
victims of the multibillion-dollar business of trafficking.[67]

Another growth industry for Ukrainian organized crime is the trade and
sale of narcotics. The growth in the amount of narcotics-related crime
known to the police has been remarkable: From 1988 to 1998, the number
of violations rose more than 16-fold, reaching 39,800 offenses or nearly 7
percent of all recorded crimes. These data do not include approximately
26,000 rural residents who were fined for the administrative infraction of
illegally planting poppies.[68] Not only does Ukraine constitute a link in
the transportation of drugs from Asia to Europe, but local demand for
drugs is rapidly growing. According to sociologists at the Ministry of
Internal Affairs University in Kharkiv who surveyed a sample of young
people in that city in 1995 and again in 1997, there was a substantial
increase in the number of respondents who had used narcotics at least once
(from 22 percent to 34.6 percent). The researchers uncovered an emerging
subculture of narcotics use among Ukrainian youth, one that included
women as well as men.[69]

In addition to playing a primary role in illegal business activities,
organized criminal groups in Ukraine were involved, through private
security and financial institutions, in the activities of a broad range of
businesses. As a rule, most protection arrangements do not come to the
attention of the police but, in the mid- and late 1990s, approximately 3,000
cases were registered each year. Of these, fully one-seventh were
determined to be the work of organized criminal groups. According to an
official report, the protection rackets were especially prominent in the
industrial cities of eastern Ukraine, as well as in the Crimea and Lviv. In
addition to extracting the usual tribute in exchange for protection from
other predatory groups, organized criminal groups extracted further
impositions at the sales level. Fully in control of the private and, to a large
extent, state trade networks, criminal groups imposed a tax built into the
price of goods ranging from 20 percent to 30 percent of the final price. In
other words, criminal groups in Ukraine imposed their own value-added
tax in addition to whatever the state could extract.[70]

Another major area of group criminal activity in Ukraine in the 1990s was
in the financial-credit system. It is important to stress that as in other
post-Soviet countries, the financial-banking sector in Ukraine was
underregulated and open to all kinds of abuses. A wide variety of offenses
were becoming commonplace, ranging from counterfeiting of money, bills
of sale, bank guarantees, and other documents to bribes to obtain credit, to
helping clients avoid taxes and hide income, to fictitious operations and
various forms of state money swindles. Sometimes, criminals paid to
obtain confidential financial information that they could then use for
extortion. Financial swindles, banking crimes, and counterfeiting all
increased substantially in the late 1990s, as did money laundering. Some
of these offenses were committed with the use of electronic banking and
communications systems, but this mechanism for fraud awaits study.[71]

Finally, terrorist activity, though a distinct phenomenon that included
political acts of violence unrelated to organized crime, also involved
organized crime. A major study of terrorism in Ukraine concluded that
organized crime groups were responsible for most explosions of buildings.
In 1995 and 1996, there were 560 such incidents, in which 90 people died.
A small part of the destruction was political, caused by Kurdish
groups.[72] 

Corruption: Its character and causes

An element closely related to the shadow economy and a potent factor in
organized crime was the corruption of state officials, who served as key
players in these larger enterprises. Labeling particular actions and persons
corrupt includes the danger of imposing norms and values not shared by
most of those involved.[73] Ukraine was never governed by the legal
rationality associated with Weberian bureaucracy, and much of what
outsiders call corruption reflected traditional exchange relationships. At
the same time, though, post-Soviet Ukraine has seen both an increase and
a systematization of the pursuit of private gain among public officials that
has major costs for ordinary citizens. Although corruption is criminogenic
in the sense that it embodies violations of criminal law, enforcement of
that law can have only limited impact on the nature and scope of corrupt
activity; all too often, attacks on corruption turn out to be political
instruments used by one faction against another.[74]

Daniel Kaufmann and Paul Siegelbaum see corruption as "the abuse of
official power for private gain," and see this definition as embracing both
the misappropriation of state wealth and the extraction of rents from
private entities. The rents may take the form of bribes or favors of any
kind, and the action performed in exchange may be not only legal but also
required as fulfillment of an official duty.[75]

The practice of corruption by government officials in Ukraine reflects
more than the opportunities provided by privatization and the collapse of
Government and Communist Party supervision. It also reflects the
traditional patterns of exchange relations that predominated under the
czars and continued in Soviet times, as well as the florescence of
clientelism that accompanied the growth of the shadow economy
beginning in the 1960s. In the 1920s, Soviet authorities launched a major
campaign against bribetaking by officials, but they eventually lost that
battle. The Soviet system became increasingly feudal, in both the
relationships among political bosses at different levels of the hierarchy and
the relationship between the public and anyone who had authority or
access to goods. Petty corruption, in the form of extra payments for scarce
goods or favors, was ubiquitous, as was the habit of paying tribute to
persons who could possibly help or harm an individual.[76] The growth of
the shadow economy made these phenomena all the more systematic and
gave higher placed officials, even members of the Politburo and
Government, opportunities to take advantage of their networks.

Starting in the late 1980s, the collapse of state authority and the
privatization of state assets produced both a further expansion of corrupt
activity by Government officials and changes in its forms. It became easier
for officials to misappropriate Government assets, for example, and new
criminal opportunities appeared in the realm of financial transactions. On a
larger plane, officials in late Soviet and post-Soviet Ukrainian
Government--largely the same persons throughout--gained more
opportunities for personal enrichment and faced fewer constraints in acting
on them. Opportunities came not only through the privatization process
but also through an increase in bureaucratic discretion accompanied by the
disappearance of any and all forms of accountability. As before, most
legislation consisted of "frame laws," which failed to supply the details
needed for application and left crucial specifications to bureaucratic
regulations. At the same time, the quick issuance of a stream of new
Presidential edicts, Government resolutions, and laws, and their
implementing regulations assured both legal ambiguity and a new scope
for bureaucratic discretion.[77]

As they gained more power, public officials in Ukraine became less
accountable. The Soviet system depended on multiple channels of
monitoring bureaucratic behavior, especially supervision by party officials
and financial agencies. In Ukraine, both of these lines of accountability
broke down and were not replaced by any real system of legislative
supervision. Vertical superiors in the government, including staff of the
Cabinet of Ministers, might hold lower officials accountable, but typically
the former were drawn into the same networks of clientelism as their
subordinates.

Finally, whatever past inhibitions had been created by ethical or moral
considerations largely disappeared in the immediate post-Soviet years, as
public officials faced a sharp gap between the capacity to meet their needs
and the income they obtained legally; they also shared a strong sense that
everyone, including their bosses, used public office for private gain. In
fact, not only officials but also politicians, such as deputies to the Supreme
Rada and lower legislatures, were also reputed to take part in this
process.[78]

In short, both private payment of officials to perform their duties and the
favoring of persons who were part of the same network constituted the
"rules of the game" in most post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine. As
some perspicacious analysts of the Soviet order had predicted (Barrington
Moore and Kenneth Jowitt), traditional forms of social relations came
back with a vengeance.[79] To say that corruption became normal,
however, is not to denigrate its costs. Corruption does matter, and it has a
wide variety of potentially deleterious effects. Corruption diverts resources
from the achievement of public goals, weakens the positive effects of
market mechanisms, increases social inequality, discredits law as an
instrument of public regulation, strengthens the hold of oligarchic cliques
in government, weakens faith in public authority, increases alienation and
social tension, and erodes political stability.[80] Not all of these were
present in Ukraine during the 1990s, but all had the potential to be.

The prosecution of Government officials for corruption-related offenses,
such as bribery, usually reflects not only the extent of the phenomenon but
also patterns of policing and politics. Proving bribery is notoriously
difficult, and in the U.S.S.R. most instances registered with the police did
not lead to prosecutions. Also, for any official of importance, screening by
party authorities assured that only those out of favor with their superiors
would face court.[81] All the same, bribery convictions increased in the
post-Stalin period from 1,800 in 1957 to 3,000 in 1970 to 6,000 in
1980.[82] Since 1986, however, the conviction rates have dropped
precipitously: In Russia, from 3,454 (1986) to 2,008 (1987) to 812 (1988)
to 441 (1989); and in Ukraine, from 1,895 (1986) to 1,473 (1987) to 1,100
(1988) to 1,049 (1989). From 1990 to 1998, the incidents of alleged
bribery recorded by the police in both countries rose 2.5 times to 5,807 in
Russia and 2,449 in Ukraine. In Russia, the rate of conviction stayed low
(in 1997, 1,381 out of 5,624 registered offenses); in Ukraine, however,
successful prosecutions were far more common, with convictions in 1,641
of 2,449 registered offenses in 1998.[83] This may have reflected a
tendency in Ukraine to prosecute mainly low-level officials, a tendency
easily observed in the enforcement of the Ukraine's 1995 Law on the
Struggle Against Corruption (henceforth, corruption law).

Beyond attempts to expose bribetaking and misappropriation of funds, a
classic way to reduce corruption is to introduce regulations on conflict of
interest and disclosure of income. The government of Ukraine succeeded
not only in drafting a law introducing such rules but also in getting it
approved. (In Russia, a comparable law has been repeatedly blocked, most
recently by the President.) The 1995 corruption law established
administrative, not criminal, responsibility; however, violations of the new
rules and regulations could lead to heavy fines and loss of employment.
Interestingly, the new rules applied not only to civil servants but also to
members of parliaments and councils. However, members of the Rada and
the regional legislatures had immunity from criminal prosecution. As
might be anticipated, prosecutions for violations of the corruption law
were directed mainly at lower level officials (categories 5 to 7) and
deputies in rural and village councils. In 1997 and 1998, nearly 100
top-level officials and approximately 235 policemen were convicted of
offenses such as failing to declare income, doing business related to one's
position, and receiving material benefits or other advantages in connection
with their work performance, including access to goods or services at a
discount-actions similar to bribetaking. Those convicted received fines but
rarely were fired.[84] Chapter 3 discusses how police and Procuracy
officials implemented the corruption law.

Both the rates of criminal convictions and the passage and enforcement of
the corruption law suggest that political forces in Ukraine found it
advantageous to pursue corruption, at least at lower societal levels.
Moreover, in 1997 and 1998, the Government sponsored an anticorruption
campaign known as Clean Hands, established a coordinating committee on
corruption, and developed a planning document known as the Conception
on the Fight Against Corruption for 1998-2005.[85] Various surveys,
including a World Bank study of small business, suggest that Ukraine has
an especially high degree of corruption; a locally generated report
estimates that 40 percent of enterprises and 90 percent of commercial
structures have corrupt relationships and that 60 percent of the income of
government officials comes from bribes.[86]

Is Ukraine's situation actually worse than Russia's? There is really no way
to know. A national poll conducted in late 1998 in the Russian Federation
found
that only 36 percent of adults had never given a bribe to an official and
that 27 percent did so regularly; 36 percent had done so more than once,
and 5 percent had done so only once.[87] A recent survey of public
attitudes toward corruption revealed that the populations of Hungary and
Russia did not perceive it to be a major problem, but those in Bulgaria and
Poland did. These public feelings "seem unrelated to the 'unknown' level
of real corrupt practices."[88] Despite the difficulties in this kind of
research, it is worth discovering whether the levels of perceived and
reported corruption in Ukraine are in any way correlated.

The corruption-organized crime connection in context

Whereas in an earlier era there was a tendency to treat corruption as a
consequence of moral degradation, the current explanation views
corruption in terms of economics and market disequilibrium. Corruption is
seen as a rational response to distorted markets and the structure of
incentives. Especially in underdeveloped economies, corruption is a form
of protectionism, either as a response to or a cause of market
uncompetitiveness.[89] As this discussion has shown, however, it is not
useful to reduce corruption and organized crime to mere economic
epiphenomena. The links between corruption and organized crime and the
evolution of new state and social structures are too deep to be ignored.

To make sense of the flourishing of corruption, the shadow economy, and
organized crime in post-Communist countries, sociologists from the East
and West have turned to theories of social networks and clientelism.[90]
Endre Sik and Barry Wellman argue on the basis of Hungarian experience
that the use of personal connections, or network capital, was more
prevalent under Communism in Eastern Europe than in the capitalist West
and became even more widespread in post-Communist conditions. Their
nuanced and well-illustrated analysis treats these patterns of conduct not as
a form of deviance but as normal and understandable consequences of
particular social conditions. In a study of crime in the Czech Republic,
John Hagan and Detelina Radoeva explicitly connect crime and corruption
with extreme differentiation in the possession of and opportunities to use
social capital. They found that high levels of trust often lead to corruption
and corporate crime, while low levels of trust disconnect others from
society and lead to street crime. Finally, Andras Sajo has produced a most
penetrating and pessimistic analysis that treats individual acts of
corruption in post-Communist countries as part of a powerful and real
form of social organization, or clientelism. To Sajo, the conduct of public
officials and businessmen is not a product of any moral deficit but, rather,
a consequence of a structure of opportunity, in which there is no viable
alternative to clientelist relations. In fact, Sajo warns us that no
confrontation with corruption, including conflict-of-interest rules, can
have any teeth and serve more than a public relations function, as long as
clientelist dependencies predominate, private property is not well
demarcated and protected, and there are no guaranteed salaries to
safeguard personal autonomy.

Conclusions

After reviewing the dramatic changes that occurred in the quantity and
quality of crime in Ukraine during the past 12 years, we reach mixed
conclusions. On the one hand, the growth of ordinary crime (violent and
especially property) represents both a natural catching up with countries of
the West (although Ukraine still has a long way to go) and a normal
response to social disorganization, increased social differentiation, and
social strain. If anything, crime rates should have risen even more than
official statistics indicate, and it may well be that the dark figure (latent
crime) is unusually high, as some Ukrainian criminologists believe. On the
other hand, the criminalization of the economy through the expansion of
the shadow economy, the role of organized crime, and the corruption of
state officials represents a more serious condition for the future of the
Ukrainian economy and politics. Although the high rates of ordinary crime
might well level off and even decrease, should Ukraine develop a
prosperous economy and effective government, the domination of the
economy by the political-criminal nexus may be more difficult to reverse.
Some observers see this as part of a transition, but others correctly view
the business-crime problem as endemic to post-Communism, just as
corruption was to late Communism. There may be entry points in what
seems to be a vicious circle. One is to study and find ways of developing
accountability among government officials and separating them from the
criminal world. (This would require positive as well as negative incentives
and, therefore, cost money.) Another, more controversial, approach is to
encourage criminal elements to launder money by investing in legitimate
business, but only in the context of an effective regulatory framework. In
fact, it is hard to imagine the development of a prosperous economy in
Ukraine without major reinvestment in the country of profits that have
been removed from the country. (It would be useful to have studies of
capital flows and identification of any returning capital, however small.)
Serious, long-term investment in Ukraine will not take place until a system
of true private property is developed, with appropriate legal protections,
but thus far the elites benefit more from ownership ambiguity.

In short, any serious attempts to remedy either of the two crime problems
identified depend upon larger changes in the economy, polity, and society.
And serious study of crime in Ukraine must relate it to the larger context
in all its complexity.

---------------------------

Notes

1. Kulik, A.G., and B.I. Bobyr, "Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti v
Ukraine v 1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody," Prestupnost v
Ukraine (Biulleten zakonodavstva i iuridichnoi prakitiki Ukraini), no. 2
(1994): 5-37; "Prilozhenie," Prestupnost v Ukraine, no. 2 (1994): 134-186;
and "Osnovnye tendentsii prestupnosti i sudimosti v Ukraine v 1994-1998
gg.," with attached tables, unpublished 1999. Unless otherwise indicated,
all references to statistical data on crime in Ukraine are drawn from these
data.

2. See, for example, Kulik and Bobyr, "Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti
v Ukraine v 1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody," 7-8 (see note
1).

3. Prestupnost i pravonarusheniia, 1991-1995: Statisticheskii sbornik,
Moscow: MVD, MIu, Mezhgosudarstvennyi statisticheskii komitet SNG,
1996: 12-13, 21.

4. Shelley, Louise I., "Organized Crime and Corruption in Ukraine:
Impediments to the Development of a Free Market Economy,"
Demokratizatsiya 6 (4) (Fall 1998): 649, citing a 1997 study of the
Ukrainian National Integrity Survey; Kulik and Bobyr, "Obshchaia
tendentsiia prestupnosti v Ukraine v 1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na
blizhaishie gody," 7 (see note 1); Zelinskii, A.F., Kriminologiia: kurs
lektsii, Kharkov: Prapor, 1996: 29, 35.

5. For details, see Solomon, Peter H., Jr., "Criminalization and
Decriminalization in Soviet Criminal Policy, 1917-1941," Law and
Society Review 16 (1) (1981): 9-44; and Solomon, Peter H., Jr., Soviet
Criminal Justice Under Stalin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996: chapter 12.

6. Solomon, Peter H., Jr., Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy:
Specialists in Policy-Making, New York: Columbia University Press,
1978: chapter 5.

7. From August 1940 until the 1950s, conviction for the crime "petty theft
from an enterprise" brought mandatory imprisonment of 1 year. Not
wanting to lose productive workers who pilfered, factory managers often
issued warnings or reprimands rather than reporting offenders to the
police. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 327-30 (see note 5).

8. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice, 327-30, 435-6 (see note 5).

9. On the involvement of the public in the shadow economy, see Simis,
Konstantin. U.S.S.R.: The Corrupt Society, New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1982; and Shtromas, Alexander, Political Change and Social
Development: The Case of the Soviet Union, Frankfurt: Peter Lang
Publishing, 1980: 67-81.

10. Solomon, Peter H., Jr., "Reforming Criminal Law Under Gorbachev:
Crime, Punishment, and the Rights of the Accused," in Toward the "Rule
of Law" in Russia? Political and Legal Reform in the Transition Period,
ed. Donald Barry, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992: esp. 246-50.

11. According to a well-informed analyst, apart from 1997, there were no
drops in the level of signals about crimes provided by the Ukrainian public
and there were signs of increasing use of administrative offenses. See
"Osnovnye tendentsii," 2 (see note 1). In Russia, an analogous leveling
and drop in recorded offenses took place a few years earlier and was
produced mainly, according to V.V. Luneev (a top criminologist), by
police omitting to record hard cases. Luneev, V.V., "Kontrol nad
prestupnostiu: nadezhny li pokazateli?" Gosudarstvo i pravo, no. 7 (1995):
89-96.

12. Udovenko, Genady, interview in Golos Ukrainy, September 7, 1999, 2.

13. Kulik and Bobyr, "Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti v Ukraine v
1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody," 13 (see note 1).

14. On public attitudes toward the police in Ukraine, see Kulik, A.G.,
"Otnoshenie naseleniia k militsii," Prestupnost v Ukraine, no. 2 (1994):
65-79.

15. Zelinskii, Kriminologiia, 170-81 (see note 4); Kulik and Bobyr,
"Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti v Ukraine v 1972-1993 gg. i prognoz
na blizhaishie gody," 13-16 (see note 1).

16. A recent bibliography of publications by Ukrainian criminologists lists
no published studies of theft and only two dissertations: one on "the
prevention by police of theft of private property on railroads" and the other
on "the prevention of open theft and robberies of state property." It is
unclear whether either includes a major empirical component.
"Bibliografiia rabot ukrainskikh kriminologov, opublikovannykh v
1992-1998 gg.," unpublished, 1999.

17. "Otchet po rezultatam issledovaniia po teme 'retsidivnaia' prestupnost
v sovremennykh usloviiakh i meropriiatiia ee preduprezhdeniia,"
unpublished, 1999: 12.

18. Zelinskii, Kriminologiia, 212-18 (see note 4); Mikhailov, A.E.,
Nekorystnaia nasilstvennaia prestupnost i ee preduprezhdenie, Kyiv: 1997:
12-24.

19. Dolgova, A.I., ed., Prestupnost, statistika, zakon, Moscow:
Itrinologicheskaia assosiatsiia 1997: 215; Sostoianie prestupnosti v Rossii
za ianvar-dekabr 1998 goda. Moscow: MVD, 1999; Zelinskii,
Kriminologiia, 218-21 (see note 4).

20. Kulik and Bobyr, "Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti v Ukraine v
1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody," 22-24 (see note 1).

21. Zelinskii, Kriminologiia, 244-57 (see note 4).

22. "Sostoianie borby s organizovannoi prestupnostiu v Ukraine"
(informatsionnaia spravka), unpublished, 1999: 8.

23. The term "rate of recidivism" refers to the share of persons who have
committed crimes while also having previous convictions of any criminal
offense remaining on their records. (The Soviet republics' criminal codes
provided for the expiry of a conviction record after an established time
period without a new offense.) For details on the calculation of recidivism,
see Zelinskii, Kriminologiia, 234-6 (see note 4).

24. Ibid., 231-43; "Otchet po rezultatam issledovaniia po teme 'retsidivnaia
prestupnost . . ." Note that the term "especially dangerous recidivist" was
similar to the "three strikes and you're out" laws in the United States. A
relatively trivial offense could and did lead to serious consequences for
offenders that bore no reasonable connection either to their rehabilitation
or just punishment.

25. Dolgova, A.I., Kriminologiia: Uchebnik dlia iuridicheskikh vuzov,
Moscow: InfraM-Norma, 1997: 708-725; "Primernaia tematika
sovmestnykh ukrainsko-amerikanskikh kriminologicheskikh issledovaniia
(predlozheniia nauchno-issledovatelskogo insitututa Nationalnoi akademii
vnutrennykh del Ukrainy)," unpublished, 1999: 7.

26. See, for example, Stoecker, Sally, "The Rise in Human Trafficking and
Role of Organized Crime," unpublished paper, Transnational Crime and
Corruption Center, American University.

27. Bonger, Willem, Criminality and Economic Conditions, Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1916; Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin: 33-4
(see note 5).

28. Merton, Robert K., "Social Structure and Anomie," (1938) in Robert
K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, Revised and Enlarged
Edition, New York: Free Press, 1957: 131-60. See Savelsverg, Joachim J.,
"Crime, Inequality, and Justice in Eastern Europe: Anomie, Domination,
and Revolutionary Change," Crime and Inequality, ed. John Hagan and
Ruth Petersen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995: 206-24.

29. For data on social stratification, see D'Anieri, Paul, Robert Kravchuk,
and Taras Kuzio, Politics and Society in Ukraine, Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1999: 166-205.

30. The classic research on the importance of the spectrum of social
control for comparative crime rates is Adler, Freda, Nations Not Obsessed
With Crime, Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1983. The Russian
criminologist Viktor Luneev cites Adler with approval and argues that it
was the effective web of social control for much of the Soviet period that
kept crime rates in the U.S.S.R. low. Luneev, V.V., "Prestupnost v Rossii
pri perekhode ot sotsializma k kapitalizmu," Godusdarstvo i Pravo, no. 5
(1998): 45-58.

31. Currie, Elliott, "Market, Crime and Community: Toward a Mid-Range
Theory of Post-Industrial Violence," in The Crime Conundrum: Essays on
Criminal Justice, ed. Lawrence M. Friedman and George Fisher, Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press 1997: 17-44; quoted text at 24-5.

32. Solnick, Steven, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet
Institutions, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

33. Prestupnost i pravonarusheniia, 1991-1995, 20, 21 (see note 3).

34. Kudriavtsev, V.N., and A.V. Naumov, eds., Nasilstvennaia
prestupnost, Moscow: Spark, 1997: 19 (in chapter by V.V. Luneev).
Interestingly, six other Soviet successor states had murder rates higher
than Ukraine; for example, Kazakhstan at 15, Latvia at 16, and Estonia at
24.

35. Dolgova, A.I., ed., Kriminologiia: Uchebnik dlia iuridicheskikh vuzov,
Moscow: InfraM-Norma, 1997, 147; "Prilozhenie," (to Kulik and Bobyr),
136 (see note 1).

36. Ibid., 184-5; Prestupnost i pravonarusheniia, 1991-1995, 19-20 (see
note 3).

37. "The 1989 Census: A Preliminary Report," Current Digest of the
Soviet Press, 42 (17) (1989), 17-23; Ryan, Michael (compiler),
Contemporary Soviet Society: A Statistical Handbook, London: Edward
Elgar, 1990: 94-5.

38. Dolgova, A.I., ed., Kriminologiia, 712-713; 764-769 (see note 25).

39. For a brief discussion of methodological obstacles in comparative
criminology, see Van Dijk, Jan, and Kristiina Kangaspunta, "Piecing
Together the Cross-National Crime Puzzle," National Institute of Justice
Journal (January 2000): 35-41. More generally see Nelken, David, "Whom
Can You Trust? The Future of Comparative Criminology," in The Futures
of Criminology, ed. David Nelken, London: Sage Publications, 1994:
220-43.

40. S.S. Boskholov, a Russian scholar and member of the Duma, refers to
the link between entrepreneurs, corrupt officials, and criminals as an "iron
triangle." See his unpublished report on "problems in the fight against
corruption in Russia" presented to the Central and East European Law
Initiative of the American Bar Association, April 22, 1999.

41. On the shadow or "second" economy in the Brezhnev period, see
Grossman, Gregory: "The Second Economy in the U.S.S.R.," Problems of
Communism 26 (5) (1977), 25-40; on the criminogenic connections, see
Anderson, Annelise, "The Red Mafia: A Legacy of Communism," in
Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and Russia: Realities of Reform,
ed. Edward P. Lazear, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995: 340-66.
The estimate of the size of the shadow economy is Grossman's.

42. For an overview of this story, see Sergeyev, Victor M., "New Social
Phenomena and Crime in Post-Communist Russia," Russian Politics and
Law 36 (5) (Sept-ember-October 1998): 3-8. See also Jones, Anthony, and
William Moskoff, Ko-ops: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurship in the Soviet
Union, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

43. On the legal framework of managerial privatization, see Johnson,
Simon, and Heidi Kroll, "Managerial Strategies for Spontaneous
Privatization," Soviet Economy 7 (4) (1991): 281-316. 

44. The term "criminal-political nexus" first appeared in Shelley, Louise I.,
"The Political-Criminal Nexus: Russian-Ukrainian Case Studies,"
unpublished (1998).

45. See, inter alia, Glinkina, Svetlana, "The Shadow Economy in
Contemporary Russia," Russian Politics and Law 34 (2) (March-April,
1996): 46-70; and Esipov, V.M., Tenevaia ekonomika: Uchebnoe posobie,
Moscow: Moskovskii Institut MVD Rossii, 1997.

46. A World Bank estimate reported in "Sostoianie borby s
organizovannoi prestupnostiu," 19 (see note 22). Other estimates include:
33 percent for the whole FSU in 1994 (by Daniel Kaufmann and Paul
Siegelbaum) and 55 percent (Louise Shelley) for Ukraine in 1997.
Kaufmann, Daniel, and Paul Siegelbaum, "Privatization and Corruption in
Transition Economics," Journal of International Affairs 30 (2) (Winter
1997): 420; Shelley, "Organized Crime and Corruption," 656 (see note 4).
Note that as of 1989, before the collapse of the Soviet economic system,
estimates of the size of the shadow economy fell in the 17 to 25 percent
range. Holmes, Leslie, The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption
Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press:
149-50.

47. On tax-collection problems in Russia, see Morozov, Alexander, "Tax
Administration in Russia," East European Constitutional Review 5 (2-3)
(1996): 39-47; and a unique anthropological study, Zschoch, Barbara,
"Tax Fraud in Yaroslavl Small Enterprises: Techniques, Causes, Cures,"
unpublished paper 1997. On tax issues in Ukraine, see Kravchuk, Robert,
"Ukraine's Soviet Inheritance: A Weak State," in State and Institution
Building in Ukraine, ed. Taras Kuzio, Robert Kravchuk, and Paul
D'Anieri, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

48. Ordinary citizens have their feet in both realms, too. An estimated 80
percent of Ukrainians received income from the second economy that they
do not report. Tenevaia ekonomika: Opyt kriminologicheskogo
issledovaniia, Lugansk: LIVD MVD Ukrainy, 1997: 38; "Problemy
sozdaniia gosudarstva i zashchity prav cheloveka v Ukraine," Materialy II
regionalnyoi nauchnoi konferentsii (February 1996), unpublished (Lviv,
1996), 4.

49. See the report of his remarks at the December 14, 1999, meeting of the
Coordinating Committee for Fighting Corruption and Organized Crime, in
Omel'chenko, G., and A. Ermak, "Pravitelstvennye garantii-kak zerkalo
ukrainskoi korruptsii," Golos Ukrainy, January 20, 2000, 3-5.

50. For helpful discussions of the difficulty of defining organized crime in
western literature, see Hobbs, Dick, "Criminal Collaboration," in The
Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2d ed., ed. M. Maguire, R. Morgan,
and R. Reiner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997: 801-40; and Jacobs
James and Christopher Panarella, "Organized Crime," in The Handbook of
Crime and Punishment, M. Tonry, ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998: 159-77.

51. Thus, although the Moscow criminologist Azalia Dolgova prefers a
narrow, Western-style definition of "organized crime," her Ukrainian
counterpart Zelinskii prefers a broad one. See Zelinskii, Kriminologiia,
197-201 (see note 4).

52. Public remarks of Volodymr Stashis, the President of the Ukrainian
Academy of Legal Sciences and Director of the Kharkiv Center for the
Study of Organized Crime, at an NIJ-sponsored conference on
criminology in Kyiv, November 20, 1999. See also Glushkov, unpublished
report, 1999.

53. "Dannye o proiavleniiakh organizovannoi prestupnosti v 1993-1997 v
Rossii," Organizovannaia prestupnost, no. 4 (1998): 258-61.

54. Luneev reports that in 1996, the Russian MVD decided no longer to
record organized crime on the basis of police data, and now relies only on
prosecution statistics. Luneev, V.V., Prestupnost XX veka: mirovoi
kriminologicheskii analiz, Moscow: Norma, 1997: 303.

55. See Maguire, Mike, "Crime Statistics, Patterns, and Trends," in
Maguire et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 144 (see note
50).

56. Note that a recent study of Russian organized crime concluded that of
more than 5,000 criminal groups identified at that time, only 350 would
meet the usual Western understanding of organized crime, and between 12
and 20 deserved classification as "major cartels." Luneev, V.V.,
"Organizovannaia prestupnost v Rossii: osoznanie, istoki, tendentsii,"
Gosudarstvo i pravo, no.4 (1996): 96-109.

57. See Zlochinnost v Ukraini, Kyiv: State Committee on Statistics, 1999:
48. We discuss this in greater detail in chapter 3.

58. Luneev, Prestupnost XX veka, 304 (see note 54). A. I. Alekseev,
another Russian criminologist, reports that whereas 22 percent of all crime
was committed in groups, only 2 percent was committed by organized
criminal groups. See Alekseev, A.I., Kriminologiia: kurs lektsii, Moscow:
Kriminologicheskaia assosiatsiia, 1999: 195.

59. Quoted in Zelinskii, Kriminologiia, 201 (see note 4).

60. Such leading scholars as Luneev and Galeotti claim that the groups
themselves are "amorphous" and "loose networks," with "no rigid chain of
command." Luneev, V.V., Prestupnost XX veka, 287 (see note 54);
Galeotti, Marc, "The Mafia and the New Russia," Australian Journal of
Politics and History 44 (3) (1998): 415-16, and Galeotti, Marc, "Inside the
Russian Mafia" Jane's Intelligence Review 12 (3) (March 2000) (available
by subscription at jir.janes.com). For an insightful discussion of the
various forms of organization, see Williams, Philip, "Introduction," in
Russian Organized Crime: The New Threat? ed. Philip Williams, London:
Frank Cass, 1997: 12-14.

61. For example, the offense-based taxonomy of crime preferred by
Karpets, the aged dean of Soviet criminology, is criticized by Luneev, a
younger scholar, as "casuistic." Prestupnost XX veka, 285 (see note 54).

62. For examples, see Alekseev, 195-206 (see note 58); Zelinskii, 200-8 
(see note 4); and A. Dolgova, ed. Kriminologiia, 595-609 (see note 25).

63. See Galeotti, "The Mafia and the New Russia"; and "Inside the
Russian Mafia" (see note 60). On April 13, 2000, on Russian television,
the Russian Prosecutor General's office reported that there were only 500
real organized groups, with 4,000 active members. See also Luneev, V.V.,
"Organizovannaia prestupnost v Rossii" (see note 56).

64. Glushkov, unpublished report, 1999. Comparable data for Russia
suggest a slightly higher degree of intergroup contact and cooperation.
According to Luneev, "Organizovannaia prestupnost v Rossii" (see note
56), in 1995, 4.4 percent of Russian crime groups had international ties,
and 13 percent had interregional connections with other groups in the
former Soviet Union.

65. The collaborative U.S.-Ukrainian research groups supported by the
International Center of the National Institute of Justice are organized along
functional or crime-specific lines. For example, most groups have focused
their research on specific kinds of offenses, such as human trafficking,
money laundering, and drug trafficking.

66. Volkov, Vadim, "Violent Entrepreneurship in Post-Communist
Russia," Europe-Asia Studies 51 (5) (July 1999): 741-54.

67. "Sostoianie borby s organizovannoi prestupnostiu v Ukraine" 25-26
(see note 22); Shelley, Louise I., "Human Trafficking: Defining the
Problem," Organized Crime Watch-Russia, 1 (2) (February 1999): 1-2.

68. Kulik and Bobyr, "Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti v Ukraine v
1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody," Prestupnost v Ukraine
(Biulleten zakonodavstva i iuridichnoi prakitiki Ukraini), no. 2 (1994):
5-37" 19 (see note 1); International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,
1997: Ukraine, Washington, DC: Bureau of International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement Affairs, March 1998.

69. "Molodezh i narkotiki: nauchnyi otchet po itogam sotsiologicheskogo
issledovaniia," unpublished report, Kharkov: MVD Universitet
vnutrennykh del, kafedra sotsiologii, 1997. For analogous data and
analysis of adolescents and narcotics in the Russian Federation, see Popov,
V.A., and O.Iu. Kondrateva, "Narkotizatsiia v Rossii-shag do nationalnoi
katastrofy," Sotstiologicheskie issledovaniia, no. 8 (1998): 65-8.

70. "Sostoianie borby s organizovannoi prestupnostiu v Ukraine" 12-13,
16-17 (see note 22).

71. Ibid., 17-24 (see note 22).

72. Antilenko, V.F., Sovremennyi terrorizm: sostoianie i vozmozhnosti
ego uprezhdeniia (kriminologicheskoe issledovanie), Kyiv, 1998: 156,
145.

73. For wise observations along these lines, see Beare, Margaret,
"Corruption and Organized Crime: Lessons from History," Crime, Law
and Social Change, 28 (2) (1997): 155-72. See as well the trenchant
remarks of Andras Sajo "that corruption in Eastern Europe is, in part, a
function of Western perceptions." Sajo, Andras, "Corruption, Clientelism
and the Future of the Constitutional State in Eastern Europe," East
European Constitutional Review 7 (2) (Spring 1998): 37-46.

74. For example, the Russian observer Boskholov cautions against careless
campaigns against corruption for precisely these reasons. See Boskholov,
"Problemy ugolovnoi politiki v sfere borby s korrupstii," in
Informatsionnyi biulleten,' no. 5, published by the Irkutsk Center for the
Study of Organized Crime, May 1995.

75. Kaufmann and Siegelbaum, "Privatization and Corruption," 422 (see
note 46).

76. For vivid examples, see Simis, U.S.S.R.: The Corrupt Society (see
note 9).

77. On frame laws and bureaucratic discretion, see Sergeyev, "New Social
Phenomena and Crime in Post-Communist Russia," 9-19 (see note 42).

78. See Boiko, A.M., "O nekotorykh faktakh kotorye determiniruiut
korruptsiiu," Doklad dlia konferentsii "Kontseptsiia formirovaniia
zakonodatelstva Ukrainy," unpublished (October 1997).

79. Moore, Barrington, Jr., Terror and Progress-U.S.S.R.: Some Sources
of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship, New York: Harvard
University Press, 1954; Jowitt, Kenneth, "Soviet Neotraditionalism: The
Political Corruption of a Leninist Regime," Soviet Studies, 35 (3) (1983):
275-97.

80. For a comprehensive analysis of the negative consequences of
corruption (and of some of its latent positive functions), see the Satarov
report: Fond informatika dlia demokratii, "Korruptsiia v Rossii," published
in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 19 February 1998, 3-16; partially reprinted in
Chistye ruki 2 (1999), 5-13; and translated as "Russia: Corruption Seen as
a Socioeconomic Problem," FBIS-SOV-98-072, available on the Internet
to subscribers to wnc.fedworld.gov.

81. On party screening of misdeeds by important officials, see Solomon,
Peter H., Jr., "Soviet Politicians and Criminal Prosecutions: The Logic of
Party Intervention, " in Cracks in the Monolith: Party Power in the
Brezhnev Era, ed. James Millar, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1992: 3-32.

82. Table in Chistye ruki #2 (1999): 10 (see note 80).

83. The Russian data comes from Luneev, V.V., "Sniskhoditelnost vlastei
k korruptsioneram dovedena do absurda," Chistye ruki #2 (1999), 26-33,
especially at 31; and the Ukrainian data from Kulik and Bobyr,
"Obshchaia tendentsiia," (see note 1), and "Osnovnye tendentsii
prestupnosti v Ukraine v 1972- 1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody,"
with attached tables, unpublished 1999. (see note 1). 

84. Informants have told us that the police and Procuracy in Ukraine
competed in the generation of cases under the law on corruption, and
produced many weak ones that had to be stopped by judges. Zakon
Ukrainy ot 5 oktiabria 1995, "O borbe s korruptsiei;" Luneev,
"Sniskhoditelnost vlastei k korruptsioneram dovedena do absurda," (see
note 83); "Borba s korruptsiei v Ukraine (informatsionnyi material),"
unpublished (1999).

85. "O sostoianii ispolnenii tsentralnymi i mestnymi organami
ispolnitelnoi vlasti aktov zakonodatelstva o gosudarstvennoi sluzhbe i
borbe s korruptsiei," Postanovlenie Kabineta Ministrov Ukrainy ot 3
avgusta 1998, No.1220." 

86. Shelley, Louise I., "Organized Crime and Corruption in Ukraine" (see
note 4); "Sostoianie borby s organizovannoi prestupnostiu v ukraine," 25
(see note 22).

87. Rudnev, Valerii, "Budushchee bez korruptsii," Chistye ruki, no.1
(1999), 1-2.

88. Sajo, Andras, "Corruption, Clientelism, and the Future of the
Constitutional State in Eastern Europe," 42 (see note 73).

89. For a review of the literature and examples of such explanatory
strategies, see Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Corruption and Government:
Causes, Consequences, and Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999; Sachs, Jeffrey, and Katerina Pistor, The Rule of Law in
Russia, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

90. Sik, Endre, and Barry Wellman, "Network Capital in Capitalist,
Communist, and Postcommunist Countries," in Networks in the Global
Village: Life in Contemporary Communities, ed. Barry Wellman, Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1999: 229-53; John Hagan and Detelina Radoeva,
"Crime and Capitalization in the Czech Republic," in Friedman and
Fisher, The Crime Conundrum, 75-92 (see note 31); Sajo, "Corruption,
Clientelism, and the Future of the Constitutional State in Eastern Europe"
(see note 73).

---------------------------

Criminal Justice in Post-Soviet Ukraine

The system of criminal justice in Ukraine today is, as it has been for nearly
10 years, on the verge of reform. New draft codes of criminal law and
procedure, as well as draft laws on court organization, the status of judges,
the Procuracy, and organized crime, have circulated in academic and law
enforcement institutions, traversed in and out of the Ukrainian legislature,
briefly appeared in public for commentary, and then made their way back
to the floor of the Rada for debate and further readings. Although there
was little chance that any of this fundamental legislation would be adopted
until after the Presidential elections of 1999, there is a strong possibility
now that some of this legislation will be adopted in the first years of the
new millennium.

Ukraine today faces considerable pressure to modernize and humanize
legislation governing the administration of criminal justice. The adoption
of a new Constitution in 1996, ratification of several international
covenants and obligations, and Ukraine's desire to remain in good standing
with the Council of Europe and eventually join the European Union all
increase the likelihood of major movement on these legislative issues.[1]
This political timeframe presents criminologists and legal scholars both in
Ukraine and abroad with a small window of opportunity. Applied research
completed before the adoption of this critical legislation may yet influence
the reform process. Although those outside the country should not be
naive or overly optimistic about the prospects for shaping the future of
Ukrainian criminal justice, they should also not be unduly pessimistic. The
imprimatur of science, international expertise, and serious scholarship
behind any legislative recommendation in Ukraine's polarized parliament
would smooth its journey. Perhaps just as importantly, it would strengthen
the position of criminologists and legal scholars in the development of
public policy.[2]

To identify appropriate topics and methods of investigation, however, we
must take note of the Soviet legacy in Ukrainian criminal justice. Few
fundamental changes in criminal law and practice have occurred in the 9
years since Ukraine became independent of the U.S.S.R. In understanding
the current state of Ukrainian criminal justice, researchers today must
appreciate the recent Soviet past. This chapter begins, then, by examining
the Soviet legacy of criminal justice. It then addresses changes in
institutions and the administration of justice since 1992. Finally, it
assesses the performance of the state in fighting crime (ordinary,
economic, and organized) and corruption in the post-Soviet period.

The Soviet Legacy

The legal system in Ukraine under Soviet rule and the character of the
justice administered by its institutions and officials differed little from that
in Soviet Russia. Ukraine's codes of criminal law and procedure were
modeled closely after Russia's, and its principal legal institutions were
deeply sovietized. Ukraine's system of criminal justice was what one
might call neoinquisitorial, in which the preliminary investigation, not the
trial, was the decisive stage of proceedings, and the development of the
case during this stage was monopolized by a supposedly impartial and
objective investigator (sledovatel). Unlike the investigator in most
Continental systems, however, the investigator in Ukraine was neither a
judicial officer nor a neutral figure. Adversarial elements, such as open
and oral review of the evidence and the participation of both prosecution
and defense counsel at trial, were circumscribed. The dossier developed by
the investigator served as a script for the trial judge, directing his or her
attention, shaping the scope of inquiry, and, in most cases, determining the
trial's outcome. The judge's main task was to verify the evidentiary
findings and evaluations made by the pretrial investigator and then assign
punishment.[3]

Institutions

The central position in this neoinquisitorial system of criminal justice was
occupied by the Procuracy, an institution of enormous power and prestige.
Originally created by Peter the Great as the "eye of the Czar," the Russian
Procuracy until 1864 had responsibility for monitoring affairs of state, in
particular ensuring compliance with the edicts of the autocrat. The Judicial
Reform of 1864 transformed the Czarist Procuracy into a prosecutorial
agency, but Lenin in 1922 decided to restore the Soviet Procuracy to its
role as supervisor of legality in public life, including responding to the
complaints of citizens about illegal actions of government officials.
Throughout its history (until 1991), the Soviet Procuracy performed both
supervisory and prosecutorial functions, in varying balances. During the
late 1920s and 1930s, the Procuracy was mobilized by the party leadership
to help implement its transformational policies, including industrialization
and collectivization, as well as to prosecute, sometimes extrajudicially,
those branded as "enemies of the people."[4] Despite this involvement in
the application of terror, the Procuracy evolved into the main mechanism
of centralization and the restoration of legal order, however draconian, in
the late Stalin period. Subsequent Soviet leaders expanded the role of the
Procuracy in public affairs, partly to counter the secret police in succession
struggles, but also to develop "socialist legality." 

Shoring up public confidence in the state and ensuring greater
predictability in economic relations were important regime goals, and the
Procuracy played a critical role in their achievement. The Procuracy
quickly became the most prestigious legal institution with the best cadres
and greatest resources. Its stature and centralization--unlike most public
officials, procurators were not also subordinate to local governments--
made the Procuracy, both in the eyes of the public and in reality, the one
agency in the U.S.S.R. capable of combating corruption in the localities
and providing a modicum of hierarchy in the application of laws. In the
Gorbachev period, the Procuracy experienced further growth in both
personnel and political significance. During the so-called war of laws, as
republics and regions demanded more autonomy or in some cases
sovereignty, the Procuracy served as the last bastion of Soviet legality.

The political prominence of the Procuracy stemmed in large part from its
responsibility for the "general supervision" (obshchii nadzor) of legality in
public life. It performed the role of an aggressive and omniscient
ombudsman, protecting the interests of the commonweal, intervening in
civil suits, and, most important, reviewing citizens' complaints against the
state. But the Procuracy was not supposed to wait for signals of
wrongdoing; its task was to preempt illegality--to prevent not only crimes
but also social injustice, pollution, malfeasance in state enterprises, and
misadministration of the state. For this purpose, it conducted periodic
"checkups" (proverki) that were, in effect, raids on public agencies and
social organizations. With the power to subpoena information and
documents, the Procuracy could refer its findings to courts for the
application of fines or initiation of criminal proceedings, or recommend to
the Government changes in laws and administrative practices. In sum, the
Procuracy was a metagovernmental institution with unique and unwieldy
powers--not a separate branch of government, as some have suggested.[5]

In matters of criminal justice, the Procuracy was similarly all-competent
and all-powerful. Its power stemmed from its unusual dual role in
administering justice: procurators acted as both prosecutors and referees of
the legality of proceedings at all stages. Even the procurator who
prosecuted a case in court, and not merely his superiors, could issue a
protest of the trial court's ruling or verdict, which higher courts were
obliged to review. In addition, the procurator who eventually presented in
court the state's case against the accused was usually responsible for
ensuring objectivity in the dossier and development of the case during the
pretrial investigation. This commingling of functions naturally jeopardized
the procurator's impartiality. The fact that the Procuracy also answered to
the state for the success of the fight against crime, however measured,
made its dual role especially problematic. The Procuracy had an
institutional conflict of interest, and its allegiance to legality was divided.

In the 1980s, a minority of vocal and respected legal scholars asserted that
the Procuracy represented a threat to the rule of law and independence of
the judiciary. The Procuracy's domination of the pretrial stage, right to
protest court decisions, ability to trigger multiple stages of appellate
review, and general lack of what political scientists now call "horizontal
accountability" was perceived as an excessive check on the judiciary's
power and autonomy and as inconsistent with the rule of law. This opinion
generated momentum for the first wave of judicial reform in post-Soviet
Ukraine, discussed later in this chapter. However, the greatest threat to
legality and rule of law presented by the Procuracy came during the
pretrial stage. The Procuracy alone sanctioned almost every arrest and all
searches, seizures, and wiretappings without having to justify or give
reasons for its decisions to any institution or person. Moreover, appeals of
such decisions were not adjudicated by courts; rather, they were handled
administratively by higher level procurators. Perhaps the most worrisome
aspect of the Procuracy's monopoly of proceedings at the pretrial stage
was the potential for biased and unvigilant supervision of its own
investigators. Because of the pressure to clear crimes and charge likely
offenders, there were strong incentives to overlook mistakes, infractions,
and bias in the work of investigators.

By the 1970s, the vast majority of criminal investigations were conducted
by investigators working within the police departments, but this did not
eliminate bias or improve the quality of investigations.[6] Though
institutionally subordinate to the republican Ministries of Internal Affairs
(MVD), the police were also part of local government and held
accountable by it. Although, as a rule, MVD investigators possessed a
higher legal education, they were police department employees and vitally
concerned with police goals, such as solving crimes. Instead of providing a
fresh assessment and thorough screening of the detectives' work, police
investigators often did little more than give legal form to the detectives'
hunches and reports.[7] Consequently, the quality of police investigations
fell markedly in the last decade of Soviet power. Many of the more
talented and experienced investigators left MVD, especially as the socialist
economic system began to collapse and the opportunities for profitable
employment in the private sector grew. In 1991, independent Ukraine
inherited a young, undereducated, and relatively inexperienced corps of
criminal investigators.

Courts in Soviet Ukraine were weak and dependent bodies that lacked
public respect, and the career of judge had low status and few rewards.
One of the reasons for this was the limited jurisdiction of the courts.
Courts did not deal with constitutional matters; their main mandate was
the enforcement of criminal law and the resolution of civil disputes
relating to divorce and alimony, housing, inheritance, and labor issues.
The judiciary's role in reviewing the legality of the actions by government
officials was exceedingly small (for example, one could not contest a
traffic ticket in court until the 1970s) and, as explained above, closely
circumscribed in the crucial pretrial phase. Further, the courts played only
a minor role in the resolution of commercial disputes, as conflicts between
state-owned firms were handled by special tribunals of the state arbitrazh,
which was not a part of the court system. However, judges could not
perform even these modest functions free of constraints, as they faced
pressures to avoid acquittals and to sentence according to existing policies.
Records were kept of judges' performance, according to such criteria as
stability of sentences (i.e., the percentage of verdicts that withstood
appeal), and these records influenced the course of a judge's career. Judges
whose decisions were reversed too often faced disciplinary proceedings
and, on occasion, recall.[8]

A second factor influencing respect for the courts was that, rather than
being independent, judges in the U.S.S.R. were exposed to multiple lines
of dependency-one horizontal and two vertical. In their localities, judges
depended upon local political officials, including party bosses, for the
provision of personal benefits (such as apartments and vacations) and
extrabudgetary support of the courts (maintaining and repairing court
buildings, provision of cars). In addition, local party leaders also had a
voice in judges' continuation in office, including a say in their periodic
renomination for election (for 5 years) and the right to initiate a recall.
Most judges felt sufficiently obliged to their local patrons to cooperate
with their needs, whether responding to the occasional case intervention or
maintaining appropriate records. Still, in the last decades of Soviet power,
judges felt even greater dependency upon their two vertical masters: the
Ministry of Justice and the higher courts. The Ministry of Justice and its
regional departments administered the courts by controlling their budgets,
distributing bonuses, handling complaints, monitoring delays, and writing
the performance evaluations on which judges' career advancements
depended. The higher courts supervised lower court performance by
holding training courses, convening conferences on judicial practice,
conducting disciplinary proceedings, and using their considerable
appellate power.

Another sign (and cause) of the low status of the courts and judges was
financial. Although the Soviet government was famous for its capacity to
target resources to its priority concerns, the administration of justice was
not one of them. Typically, the buildings occupied by courts throughout
the Soviet period were among the most modest and worst maintained
public buildings and a matter of constant complaint. Moreover, judges'
salaries and budgets for court staff and expenditures were barely adequate,
causing judges to rely upon the generosity of local officials and,
occasionally, corruption. Another sign of judges' low status was the
meager provision of benefits, which in the Soviet system mattered greatly.
A large number of judges in the 1970s and 1980s lacked their own
apartments and many, like their colleagues in MVD, left state service for
private practice in the last years of Soviet power.

Judges in the late Soviet period also had a weak sense of professional
identity. Judges received little, if any, special training; familiarity with the
courts came mainly from earlier experience working as court secretaries.
Opportunities for midcareer training (special courses) existed but were
mostly episodic and superficial. Also, judges had none of the institutions
to support interactions among them and make them into a community.
There were no judges' associations, no special literature for judges, and no
research institutes devoted to court problems and the administration of
justice. Judges in many regions had opportunities to gather in the capital
city for conferences, but these were typically organized by party bodies or
justice officials to make judges aware of the current priorities in the
struggle against crime, which was viewed by many Government officials
as the courts' primary responsibility.

Criminal procedure

Soviet criminal procedure developed at least three rules that tipped the
scales of justice in favor of the prosecution. First, defense counsel played a
negligible role in the pretrial investigation, unless the accused was a
juvenile or mentally ill. Advocates, as defense attorneys were called, had
no access to the dossier being developed until the conclusion of the
investigation and no right to conduct parallel inquiries, and, until 1990,
had only delayed access to the accused. Second, when the incriminating
evidence was insufficient to convict, prosecutors were given a second (or
third) chance by virtue of the uniquely Soviet institution of
"supplementary investigation." At either a pretrial hearing or trial, if the
court could not fill in the gaps of the investigation, prosecutors could
request that the judge return the case for further investigation-without
jeopardizing future judicial proceedings. Third, the prosecution enjoyed a
privileged position in appellate proceedings. Although both parties had an
automatic right to an appeal in cassation (which was ostensibly limited to
reviewing questions of fact), only the procurator had the right to be present
(presence of accused and defense counsel was at the discretion of the
judge) and he was entitled to give conclusions and be heard first. If no
appropriate relief was obtained, a procurator could then launch a protest in
supervision and deliver it to as many as three different levels of appellate
tribunals, all of which were empowered to change rulings, vacate
judgments, adjust sentences, or order new trials for a number of reasons
(including the need to apply a stiffer punishment).[9] Trials in the district
(raion) people's courts (the lowest level of court) were often perfunctory
but not necessarily brief. The judge and two lay assessors (who were
elected from and by the population at large and adjudicated questions of
fact and law with the judge) had to conduct an exhaustive inquiry,
verifying the truthfulness and objectivity of all information compiled by
the pretrial investigator. Incomplete, unobjective, or inexhaustive
investigations of the record by the judge could lead to a reversal; at the
trial stage, there was no doctrine of harmless error. The confession of the
accused played an important role, and the trial typically began with an
inquest into the accused's character, background, and, especially, level of
remorse. Although a confession by itself could not support a conviction, it
was central to the judge's main task: assigning punishment. Except for the
interrogation of the defendant, trials were routine, formulaic, and
sometimes redundant.

Performance

How did the system operate in practice? What was criminal justice like in
Soviet Ukraine? Perhaps the most striking feature of criminal justice in
Ukraine was the paucity of acquittals. Throughout the 1980s, fewer than
one-half of 1 percent of criminal defendants were acquitted. In fact, an
accused person was more likely to be judged unfit to stand trial than to
receive a judgment of acquittal. The rate of acquittal, however, was not a
good measure of Ukrainian justice, for not all accused were convicted.
Courts had at least two reliable mechanisms for dispensing with badly
investigated cases or unwarranted prosecutions: One was to return the case
to the police or Procuracy for supplementary investigation, where it might
conveniently disappear; the other was to dismiss charges and terminate
criminal proceedings. In the early 1980s, supplementary investigations
constituted approximately 3 to 4 percent of all dispositions; this figure
rose to nearly 9 percent at the end of the decade. The rate of terminations
was more stable, ranging from 4 to 6 percent of all dispositions.[10] Even
with the negligible number of acquittals, therefore, the outright conviction
rate was only 85 percent. Thus, although Ukrainian criminal justice was
rife with accusatorial bias, the system did not always flout basic rules of
law and procedure.

The two worst aspects of criminal justice in Ukraine were an overreliance
on detention as a measure of restraint and ensuring the appearance of the
accused at trial, and the excessive use of imprisonment. At least 35 percent
of all persons accused, and virtually all persons charged with offenses
likely to be penalized with custodial sanctions, spent many months, and
sometimes years, in jail awaiting trial.[11] There was no provision for bail,
and alternative measures of restraint were available principally for those
charged with truly trivial offenses. Also, prison was the main form of
punishment in Ukraine, perhaps because of the economy's insatiable
demand for cheap labor.[12] In some years, 60 percent of those convicted
by courts were given custodial sentences. By the 1980s the rate of
imprisonment was down to 40 percent, and, as exhibit 3.1 shows, at the
end of the decade it stood at 34 percent. This figure was misleading,
however, for it encompassed a wide variety of nonviolent crimes as well
as several offenses that in other countries might be classified as
misdemeanors. Prison not only was a virtual certainty for those guilty of
violent crimes but also routinely was used for those who committed
ordinary property offenses, especially attempts on socialist property.

Was Ukrainian criminal justice effective in fighting crime? On paper it
was spectacularly successful. Levels of cleared or solved (raskrytye)
crimes were fantastically high. In most years, the clearance rate hovered
above 90 percent; for certain offenses, it was closer to 100 percent. Such
stellar performance, however, had much less to do with the mythic
"advantages" in the prosecution of neoinquisitorial procedure than with the
vices of the police accounting system. Until 1988 the police could "solve"
crimes without sending cases or criminals to court. Between 1970 and
1980, the Ministry of Internal Affairs considered a crime "solved" from
the moment a decision was made to open (vozbudit') a criminal
investigation. Between 1980 and 1988, a crime was deemed solved once
charges were formally presented to the accused. In both systems, however,
the police were not required to obtain a conviction in order to be favorably
evaluated. Not surprisingly, many "solved" crimes never made it to court.
Soviet criminal procedure aided and abetted these practices, affording both
police and Procuracy many reasons not to pursue a criminal case to its
logical conclusion. For example, criminal proceedings could be terminated
for a host of "nonrehabilitative reasons" (e.g., if there had been a "change
of circumstances" and the crime had ceased to be "socially dangerous"), or
the accused could be diverted from formal prosecution by having their
cases sent to "comrades courts" or by being placed under a variety of
forms of social supervision.[13]

In 1988, however, the U.S.S.R. Procuracy and MVD jointly decreed that
henceforth a crime would be considered solved only when a procurator
had signed a conclusion to indict (obvinitelnoe zakliuchenie)--meaning
that the case now had to be sent to court for trial. These rule changes
limited prosecutorial discretion and discouraged diversion, but they also
encouraged the police to engage in activities designed to protect their
performance ratings--principally, concealing reports of crimes.[14]
Because of this and the emergence of high amounts of unrecorded or
"latent" crime, the performance numbers remained respectable and the
police still appeared vigilant. As exhibit 3.2 shows, police opened
investigations in approximately 75 percent of registered crimes, identified
suspects in every second case, and, with the assistance of the Procuracy,
secured convictions of more than 90 percent of those charged.

Unfortunately for the Ukrainian police, the rule changes coincided with
political reforms that brought about heightened public scrutiny of police
conduct. Revelations of fraud in recording crime showed that police
claims were much inflated and that the system's performance was not
exemplary. Using the same data, scholars and journalists with a critical
eye could show that fewer than one-third of registered crimes (104,119 of
369,809) ended in convictions. Not just criminologists, but also the public
at large now knew that there were considerable problems in the fight
against crime. Dissatisfaction with the state's record in ensuring public
safety spawned pressures for fundamental changes in policing and
prosecution as well as the reform of criminal law and procedure.

Post-Soviet Criminal Justice

The desire to improve the fight against crime in Ukraine developed in
parallel with discussions about the rule of law and a growing interest in the
establishment of a rule-of-law state, or Rechtsstaat.[15] But this movement
and efforts to liberalize criminal justice in Ukraine have not been very
strong; certainly they have been much weaker than in Russia. This
weakness comes not from a shortage of reformist and liberal-minded legal
scholars in Ukraine but, rather, from the policy priorities of a new state
gripped by a surge in levels of recorded crime and a catastrophic collapse
of the economy. Put simply, politicians' interest in legal reform and
individual liberties in the post-Soviet period has taken a back seat to
matters of statehood, especially the relationship to Russia of independent
Ukraine. For the state, the key issues have been sovereignty and survival,
not modernization and liberalization of the legal system. This political
calculus has stalled the reform of criminal justice in any direction.

Judicial reform

In the first years of independence, Ukraine moved quickly to introduce
judicial reforms. In April 1992, a Conception of Judicial Reform was
endorsed by the Rada and, by the end of 1993, a packet of laws was
adopted that substantially improved the status of judges in Ukraine and
reduced external influence on their work. Instead of being elected by the
public at large for 5-year terms, district court judges were now elected,
upon the recommendation of the chairman of a regional court, for 10-year
terms by the regional legislative assembly.[16] Judges also acquired some
capacity for self-government through new corporate associations (councils
of judges) and judicial qualification commissions (consisting of judges
and lawyers nominated by politicians) that vetted candidates for judicial
posts, controlled disciplinary proceedings, and convened congresses for
the discussion of reform issues. Judges' salaries were increased, and judges
received new benefits and privileges, including, most importantly, the
right to adequate housing within 6 months of appointment.[17]

Unfortunately, these innovations did little to address the two main sources
of judicial dependence--the Ministry of Justice and higher courts--and
were much more modest than those called for by judges and many legal
scholars. Most judges, for example, wished to remove the responsibility
for judicial administration and court financing from the Ministry of Justice
and create in its place an entirely autonomous judicial department,
subordinate only to the Supreme Court and Council of Judges.[18] But the
Ministry of Justice was reluctant to give up this important lever of
influence on judges, and the deputies in the Parliament, excited about
democratic rule and representative government, were unwilling to cede
political power to the judiciary. The forces against radical reform were
simply too powerful. Furthermore, there were substantial problems in the
realization of even these modest improvements in judicial status and
independence. Despite the new legislation, judges had difficulty obtaining
appropriate housing, continued to work in dilapidated buildings, and were
frequently exposed to outside pressures (often from deputies).[19] Not
surprisingly, the number of vacancies and rate of turnover in the judiciary
remained high, which only served to worsen the performance of courts
about which politicians were so agitated. 

In February 1994, the President ordered work on a new Conception of
Judicial Reform, but by the time one had been drafted, the window of
political and economic opportunity for radical changes had closed.[20]
Parliamentary elections in March 1994, followed by Presidential elections
in October, and fighting over the division of powers in the drafting of a
new Constitution created a political crisis that put judicial reform off the
active agenda.[21] So contentious were the politics of Ukrainian
constitutionalism that a collapse of the Republic was only narrowly
avoided.[22]

The adoption of a new Constitution in 1996 reopened the door to radical
legal and judicial reform, for it enshrined a wide array of important civil
liberties and proclaimed new court structures and procedures that required
profound changes to the organization of the judiciary and criminal
procedure. For example, the Constitution proclaims rights against double
jeopardy (article 61) and searches and seizures not sanctioned by courts
(articles 29 to 31), and it contains provisions for jury trials, new forms of
appellate review, and the abolition of the Procuracy's power of general
supervision. However, none of these rights and changes are realizable
without new enabling legislation, and the transitional provisions in the
concluding chapter of the Constitution, section 15, postpones the
introduction of many of these changes until 2001, or until such time as the
Rada introduces such legislation. Because of the protracted socioeconomic
crisis and the priorities of political figures at the national level, the state
has not had the means with which to deliver on these promises. The only
major institutional innovation in the area of judicial reform has been the
introduction of a Constitutional Court, which has been besieged by
questions concerning the proper configuration of state power, not the
niceties of criminal law and procedure.[23] Two other dramatic new
institutions-the introduction of habeas-like hearings for those in pretrial
detention [24] and the possibility of bail [25] have been grafted onto the
neoinquisitorial structure, but neither has had great consequences for the
courts or the administration of justice.

As of the new millennium, judicial reform in Ukraine has thoroughly
bogged down. There is neither a political engine nor public constituency
for reform. Both the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice, the two
institutions most directly interested in and affected by judicial reform, lack
the right of legislative initiative and are themselves stalemated over reform
issues. The two Rada committees concerned with judicial and justice
reform--the Committee on Legal Reform and the Committee on
Legislative Facilitation of the Operation of Law Enforcement Agencies
and the Fight Against Organized Crime and Corruption--are divided on the
major questions of the day and are rumored to be patronized by the
Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice, respectively. The most important
piece of reform legislation, the Draft Law on Court Organization
(Sudoustroistvo), on which the vast majority of changes to criminal
procedure depend, has stalled. The key sticking points include the proper
configuration of projected juries (whether they will be mixed or classical
and how many votes should be required for conviction and acquittal);[26]
the nature of new appellate courts; the relationships of local courts to
existing administrative units; and the place and role of specialized
tribunals, such as motions, administrative law, commercial, and military
courts.[27] Although a conciliatory commission was to smooth over the
differences between the two remaining drafts (originally, five were
submitted), the deputies could not come to agreement and the bill was not
put to the floor for consideration.[28] As of early fall 2000, the Rada still
had not sorted out the differences between the drafts and adopted a law on
court organization.

In the meantime, the judiciary has endured a protracted crisis in funding
and a backlash against its enhanced status and newly won insulation from
outside interference. In 1998, courts received only 49.6 percent of the
amount of funding deemed essential to basic operations. In February, a
Deputy Minister of Justice claimed that there had been a 20-percent
increase in the amount budgeted for the courts in 1999, so almost 70
percent of the level requested by the judiciary as essential will be delivered
this year.[29] A recent report, however, claims that at midyear courts have
received only one-third of their appropriations.[30] Lower level judges
report that their courts receive assistance and short-term subsidies from
local governments-which tends to jeopardize their independence in a
variety of cases-but these sums are usually modest and will likely stop as a
source of future sustenance.[31] Having lost its patience with the Council
of Ministers, the Supreme Court has now requested that the Constitutional
Court rule on the constitutionality of the Government's failure to fund the
courts properly.[32]

The backlash against courts comes chiefly from the executive. In 1998, for
example, the Council of Ministers proposed amendments to the Law on
the Status of Judges that would have eliminated many of the privileges and
benefits of judges.[33] Also in January 1998, the President established a
Higher Council of Justice made up of 19 individuals, including leading
politicians, legal officials (of which only 2 are judges), and scholars, that
aggressively vets first-time candidates for judicial posts and reviews
disciplinary conduct materials.[34] Councils of this kind in other
countries, such as France, Italy, and Canada, are dominated by judges.[35]
The President also has arrogated to himself the right to appoint a chairman
of district courts; although the Constitution is ambiguous on this point, the
most responsible reading gives this power to the judges of the court in
question.[36] Finally, the President has displayed open contempt for the
Supreme Court's autonomy. In February 1999, for example, President
Kuchma complained to a journalist about the Supreme Court's supervision
of judicial practice on matters relating to the Law on Foreign Investment.
Specifically, he charged that the Supreme Court wrongfully endorsed
lower court practice, which upheld the rights of foreign investors after the
law was annulled. Kuchma suggested that people hurt by such decisions
should demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court.[37] Under these
circumstances, it is not surprising that responsible parliamentarians claim
that "the judiciary today is completely subordinated to the executive."[38]

The police

The police (also called the MVD) have been beset by similar problems
stemming from the weakness of the state and the chronic crisis in funding
government operations. The MVD, according to its present Minister, Iu. F.
Kravchenko, is financed at only 30 percent of its basic needs.[39]
Although some of the shortfall is made up by local government
subventions, the inability of the state to properly fund and maintain the
police has led to an exodus (both involuntary and coerced) of capable
cadres, a reduction in the ability to train reliable police officers and
criminal investigators, and a sense of betrayal that adversely affects the
loyalty of the police. This combination of factors has spawned
considerable corruption in the ranks. Most corruption (both fact and
fiction) is the usual, insignificant kind, such as the indiscretions among the
employees of the State Automobile Inspectorate (GAI). However, the
scale of these and other forms of professional degeneration is nevertheless
worrisome. For example, internal investigations uncovered 108 acts of
corruption in 1997, and, in the first quarter of 1999, 50 police officers
were fined for misdemeanor corruption. From 1997 through 1999,
respectively, 525, 325, and 533 individuals faced criminal prosecution for
various kinds of malfeasance.[40] Even if the direct consequences for the
fight against crimes of police misconduct are not great, the impact on the
public perception of police integrity and efficacy is considerable and helps
contribute to the scale of unreported crime.

A different form of police corruption may have more serious long-term
consequences. In some cases, officers and even entire police units have
either betrayed law enforcement or been captured by criminal groups, a
development dubbed "merging" (srashchivanie) in both Ukraine and
Russia. Although no reliable data exist on this kind of corruption, it is
clear that police, on occasion, perform services for wealthier, better
supplied criminal groups and businesses by looking the other way,
providing tips, selling information, or, less commonly, performing
criminal acts. It is also not uncommon for police to compete with criminal
groups in the supply of protection services. Some of this activity is
centralized, aggressively marketed, and organized institutionally within
the MVD as extradepartmental security (Vnevedomstvennaia okhrana).
However, some of the protection services provided by police are unofficial
and disloyal. The best-known examples of this entrepreneurial policing
include guaranteeing businesses safety from gangs, criminal groups, or
fire, health, and tax inspectors.[41] In return for these services, police
officers receive free meals and hospitality from local restaurants or scarce
goods and services from stores. This activity is difficult to distinguish
from racketeering. At the very least, it blurs the distinction between cops
and robbers. Nevertheless, some officers defend these practices as either
no different from the free doughnuts enjoyed on occasion by U.S. police
officers, or as an officer's anthropology (the kind of good detective work
that gets cops closer to the ultimate objects of their investigations).
Whatever the merits of such claims and denials, the state's lack of
supervision of this conduct is cause for concern.

Partly in response to these developments, the MVD has set up a new
Division for Public Relations. So far, this division has conducted or
sponsored victimization surveys and used other research instruments to
better understand public perceptions of and interactions with the police.
Some of the research and findings are fairly primitive and used for crude
purposes. For example, the minister recently reported with a sense of
accomplishment that 34 percent of respondents in a survey claimed to trust
the police, while 33 percent did not.[42] Other projects conducted under
the auspices of the new public relations division are more promising. The
MVD, for example, has helped fund experiments with municipal police
departments, which will not only deliver better information on public
attitudes but also develop more reliable information about the extent of
unreported crime.[43] These and other investigations can rely on the
considerable research potential and capacity of the institutes, laboratories,
and universities subordinated to the MVD (which is discussed in chapter
4) to bring about a better understanding of police problems and their
potential remedies.[44]

The Procuracy

The U.S.S.R.'s collapse has been both a boon and bane for the Ukrainian
Procuracy. The Procuracy has experienced huge growth, especially in its
central administrative apparatus, which lacked independent managerial
capacity when it was subordinate to the U.S.S.R. By 1997, the number of
central staff was three times that in 1986. The magnitude of this growth is
now criticized as excessive, and a reduction in personnel and
administrative units has been engineered by Potebenko, the current
Procurator General.[45] However, this recent downsizing should not be
seen as a sign of reducing the Procuracy's functions. On the contrary, the
scope of general supervision of legality, which the Procuracy advertises as
its greatest virtue, has grown markedly in recent years.[46] The protracted
socioeconomic crisis, stealing of state assets, and general lawlessness in
public relations have heightened the state's need for self-protection and
increased the public's demand for quick and inexpensive legal aid. In this
sense, the collapse has brought about added justification for the existence
of this omnicompetent institution.

However, the pledge to create a rule-of-law state, the desire for greater
integration with European government institutions, and, above all, the
promised dilution of its functions in the new Constitution, all raise
questions about the validity of the Procuracy's present status. According to
the Constitution, not only are most of the Procuracy's current functions of
supervising legality in the pretrial stage (searches and seizures, arrest
warrants) to be transferred to the courts, but the rights and powers
associated with general supervision are to be dissolved by 2001 (chapter
15, paragraph 13). As of this writing, a year remains before new
legislation must be adopted on these questions, and there is already a
vigorous debate on the Procuracy's future. The abolitionists are in the
minority, although many of the arguments they advance are sound,
including the claim that the Procuracy is not sufficiently independent of
government to be able to properly supervise its officials.[47] Most of the
pillars of the academic legal establishment echo the nostalgic and
nationalist claims of Potebenko, who insists that Ukraine's unique identity
and current predicament warrant the retention of the historical role of the
Procuracy.[48] Nevertheless, there is considerable uncertainty over the
future role and function of the Procuracy in Ukraine. Research on such
topics as prosecutorial discretion and the effectiveness of pretrial
supervision might influence the outcome of the debate.

The character of criminal justice

There have been only modest changes in the administration of justice in
Ukraine since the U.S.S.R.'s collapse. Acquittals remain below 1 percent
of all dispositions; in 1998, they were one-half of 1 percent.[49] There are,
however, strong signs of more rigorous judicial scrutiny of evidence
amassed by the prosecution-especially in the review of habeas-like
petitions and in the rise in the number of cases terminated by courts. In
1997 and 1998, courts released from custody every third prisoner who
contested the legality of his pretrial detention.[50] Between 1990 and
1998, terminations rose from 5 to 10.3 percent of all dispositions.[51]
Together with a steady rate of returns for supplementary investigation (8
to 9 percent), these otherwise liberal court practices have aroused the
enmity of the law enforcement community to which the judiciary once
belonged. Courts today are accused of coddling criminal defendants and
are routinely decried as too independent, arbitrary, or corrupt. Although
such charges resonate with a population uncertain about public safety, they
are for the most part without merit. Each year, courts take into custody
more accused than they release, and most judges prefer to give the
prosecution a second chance in tough cases rather than order an acquittal.

The greatest problem faced by courts in the administration of criminal law
today is excessive caseload. Since 1990 the number of criminal defendants
has increased by 230 percent, and the number of administrative
(misdemeanor) hearings has risen in similar proportions. The growth in
civil suits has been equally intense, from fewer than 300,000 in 1990 to
nearly 800,000 in 1998.[52] The expansion of the judicial corps, by
contrast, has not been large; there was only a modest increase in the total
number of judges between 1990 and 1998. These figures do not fully
capture the strain on the judiciary, however, for judges now also play an
active role in corporate self-governance in addition to administering an
ever-expanding and often contradictory body of law. The principal means
by which this growing burden has been relieved are: allowing defacto
decriminalization (police and prosecution treating certain felonies as
misdemeanors), allowing bench trials in civil suits if the parties consent to
a single-judge hearing, and authorizing judges to try some criminal matters
without lay assessors. More fundamental changes to criminal and civil
procedures that might simplify and accelerate trials are currently under
consideration.[53]

Fighting Crime in Ukraine: Assessing the Regime's Response

Neither the President nor the public finds the performance of the state in
combating crime satisfactory. More than two-thirds of citizens polled in
1994 rated police work "poor," and just more than half of police officers
polled judged their own effectiveness as "low."[54] Even the Minister of
Internal Affairs now claims he is "not satisfied" with police performance,
lamenting that almost 30 percent of murders and robberies are not
solved.[55] But public opinion polls, pre-electoral platitudes, and
clearance rates are not sophisticated ways of assessing the system's
performance in fighting crime. Clearance rates in particular are famously
tricky instruments of measurement. In Ukraine, as in the United States and
United Kingdom, this rate is calculated without respect to the number of
persons ultimately convicted of crimes. It is also not based on the number
of crimes reported to the police but, rather, on the number registered by
them. Moreover, it subtracts from the total the number of crimes police
have to clear (the number of cases "suspended") (priostanovleno) because
a suspect could not be identified within 2 months.[56] For these and other
reasons, clearance rates tell us little about the quality of police detective
work and should be discounted in the attempt to assess police performance
in Ukraine. Although steps are being taken to establish different measures
of police effectiveness, at present there is no reasonable criterion by which
to assess police performance.[57]

Two other factors complicate assessments of the system's response to
crime: limited access to data and the unreliability of official statistics.
Despite more openness in Ukraine's crime reporting, there are still great
problems in accessing crime information. In 1998 the State Committee on
Statistics published only 100 copies of Crime in Ukraine (Zlochinnost v
Ukraine), the only authoritative source on rates of crime. Scholarly articles
and books with complete sets of data are also rare. One issue of an
irregular legal periodical accounts for the majority of citations and bulk of
public knowledge about the recorded levels of crime and punishment in
Ukraine.[58] Even researchers within MVD academies and institutes
report facing major restrictions of access to the data they themselves
manage.[59] Establishing a unified and publicly accessible crime database
is a prerequisite to assessing the system's performance; it would also
constitute an important first step in the development of mature, empirical
criminology in Ukraine.

There are also grave and legitimate concerns about the reliability of crime
data generated by the MVD. Not a single police officer, judge, or
Procuracy official interviewed for this study believes that the reported
2.2-percent decline in registered crime in 1998 reflects the truth. Almost
all law enforcement officials know of tricks used to enhance performance
ratings that distort the aggregate picture of crime, some of them quite
alarming. For example, the head of a district police department outside
Kharkiv reports that coroners in his district are paid to record mysterious
cases of murder as instances of "the infliction of grave bodily harm" from
which death unintentionally followed in order to relieve the police of
pressure to clear these crimes.[60] These and other deceptions are not rare,
and are presumably more common for less serious crimes. Each year, the
Procuracy uncovers about 15,000 crimes "concealed" (skrytykh ot ucheta)
by the police and opens criminal investigations into another 15,000 cases
in which the police unjustifiably decided not to commence inquiries.[61]
Skepticism and cynicism about the veracity of police crime statistics is so
common in Ukraine that many procurators advocate the transfer of control
over data registry to civilian authorities.[62]

The government itself has acknowledged a problem with crime data and
recently endorsed a program to study seriously the causes of, and means of
combating, the dark figure--latent crime (latentnaia zlochinnost). Funding
for this program, unfortunately, has reportedly disappeared.[63]
Nevertheless, initial studies have had some positive results; some scholars
have even begun to create a conceptual apparatus for the study of latent
crime. For example, Zelenetskii proposes to distinguish between artificial
and natural latency--that is, treating deliberate police distortion and
deception as latent crime and the public's underreporting of crime as
organic.[64] Other scholars focus on the extent of this natural latency;
typically they report large amounts of latent crime. One victimology
survey in Kyiv conducted with international assistance found that only
half of all crimes are reported to the police.[65] A senior sociologist at a
police institute in Kharkiv, however, suggests that the rate of unreported to
reported crime is 10 to 1; for certain kinds of crimes, he estimates the ratio
is 30 to 1.[66] Sorting out the scale of this latent crime is clearly a
prerequisite to any assessment and would provide a suitable topic for joint
research.[67]

Without advances on these three fronts, of course, any analysis of police
performance must remain speculative. Accordingly, these observations are
tentative and intended to raise questions for future research. Exhibit 3.3
presents data on levels of reported and registered crime as well as the
further handling of such offenses by police from 1990 to 1998. What do
these data tell us about the quality of policing?

First, there is still a considerable amount of selective registering of crime
in Ukraine. The rise in levels of reported crime was not matched by a
comparable rise in registered crime; that is, registered crime rose steadily
and substantially, but at a rate lower than crimes reported to the police. As
a result, while in 1990 two out of three reported crimes were registered, in
1998 police registered only two out of five reported crimes. Unless the
public is reporting false or frivolous incidents at a growing rate (which is
unlikely, given the low public confidence in the MVD), it would appear
that the police are dismissing more allegations of criminal activity than in
the past.[68] The police are not arbitrarily dismissing reports of crime; the
decrease since 1993 in the percentage of registered crimes that led to a
criminal investigation suggests that police are compelled to register such
reports even when the prospects of their solution are not great.
Nevertheless, more needs to be known about the disincentives to
registering crimes and the rationale for not opening criminal investigations
when the required elements of a crime are present.[69] What governs
police investigators' decisions to confer on reported offenses the status of a
registered crime? How many reported but unregistered crimes were serious
offenses? Is this selective registration of crimes merely a de facto
decriminalization or something more corrupt and worrisome?[70]

Second, there has been a substantial increase in the percentage of persons
charged (from 60 percent to 82 percent of persons identified). In other
words, Ukrainian prosecutors are assigning criminal liability to more
people than in the past. What factors determine whether suspects identified
by the police as probable culprits are ultimately prosecuted by the
Procuracy? Does the increase in the prosecution rate reflect the selective
registration of crimes, a diminished capacity to divert accused individuals
from trials, or better policing? What does it mean to police to have
"identified" a likely suspect? Although "identified" (vyiavleno) is not a
legal term, scholars claim it means that there are "sufficient grounds to
presume" someone committed the crime in question. Is there a common
law of "sufficient grounds" in police practice in Ukraine that, if codified,
might improve their performance? At the very least, more formalized
standards of policing would increase MVD accountability to the public.

Finally, the ratio of convictions to the number of registered crimes has
increased noticeably from 1990 to 1998, from 28 to 40 percent. Yet the
ratio of convictions to reported crimes has remained fairly stable, hovering
around 18 percent. This suggests that there has been little improvement in
the ability of police to catch criminals in the past decade. However, in
light of the great increase in levels of crime, the growing complexity of
offenses, and the underfunding of MVD, perhaps such steady rates mean
the police are coping adequately with their tasks. Clearly, examining these
data in the aggregate generates only limited knowledge. We must
approach these police processing data by categories of crime.

Economic crime

Ukraine has decriminalized some previously prohibited economic
activities, but it has not gone as far as Russia. For example, speculation--
the purchase and sale of scarce goods for the purpose of making a profit--
remains a crime in Ukraine (article 154), as do illegal currency
transactions. Moreover, since 1992, the Rada has adopted laws that
introduced a multitude of new economic offenses such as bank fraud and
tax evasion.[71] Ukrainian society is deeply divided on the question of
decriminalizing certain forms of economic activity, especially those
affecting retail prices on consumer goods. On the one hand, many (perhaps
most) Ukrainian citizens insist that the economic collapse and transition
away from solely socialist forms of property relations have given rise to
much nefarious economic conduct, a considerable portion of which causes
harm to innocent or unwitting citizens. Others argue that the Ukrainian
criminal code penalizes too many forms of ill-defined types of economic
activity, giving the regime and its administrators too much discretionary
control over citizens' daily lives. Although this debate is unlikely to be
solved by better criminology and police performance assessments, it is
instructive to analyze the available data on economic crime.

Since 1990, recorded economic crimes in Ukraine have doubled.
Nevertheless, considerable portions of the sections of the Criminal Code
pertaining to economic crimes remain dormant. According to a researcher
in Kharkiv, between 1992 and 1996, charges were brought under only 33
percent of the economic offenses listed in the code, and only 50 percent of
the criminal investigations initiated were sent to court.[72] These and
other data suggest that shortcomings in the fight against economic crime
are attributable to excessively discretionary prosecutorial strategies. The
high incidence of fines as penalties in particular suggests that the offenses
chosen for prosecution were not serious. However, other research in
Kharkiv indicates that police strategies were also part of the problem:
Only minor offenses and offenders were targeted. The fact that more than
50 percent of individuals accused of economic crimes in Kharkiv were
women suggests that discretionary policing also stifles the fight against
major economic crime.[73] Sorting out the relative contributions of the
police and the Procuracy to this shortcoming is a high priority. Are
procurators ducking or diverting serious cases from prosecution, or are
few serious criminals apprehended in the first place? Are the police
preying only on petty offenders in the marketplace? What roles do
corruption and performance evaluation play in policing strategies? To
develop answers to these and other questions, researchers will need,
among other things, more control over the recording of economic
crime.[74]

Corruption

The struggle against corruption in Ukraine has reached an impressive
level. As exhibit 3.4 shows, more than 15,000 civil servants were
convicted of a crime of office last year, or 5 percent of the total number of
civil servants in Ukraine.[75] Equally impressive is the performance of the
Procuracy in prosecuting official crimes. In 1998, procurators obtained
convictions in 67 percent of bribery cases known to the police (1,641 of
2,449 persons charged with registered offenses were convicted).[76]

This success rate may have less to do with the investigative and trial skills
of procurators than with the 1995 Law on the Struggle Against Corruption
(corruption law) discussed in chapter 2.[77] By establishing administrative
penalties (fines and removal for office) for many offenses that are virtually
indistinguishable from their counterparts in criminal law-for example,
"receiving material benefits, services, privileges, and other benefits" in
exchange for the performance of public services (article 1A, corruption
law) closely resembles accepting bribes (article 168, Criminal Code)[78]--
this law effectively decriminalized many forms of corruption. Instead of
drawing up criminal charges, the police, in consultation with the
Procuracy, now can handle reports of corruption and malfeasance without
getting bogged down in formal, costly, and lengthy pretrial investigations.
Such added prosecutorial discretion could be expected to improve the
quality of cases in which the Procuracy decides to introduce criminal
charges.

Ideally, giving the police and the Procuracy new discretion in such matters
should have worked also to diminish the pressures not to dismiss reports
of crime and corruption (which, for obvious evidentiary reasons, are not
easy to investigate or prosecute, and thus might jeopardize clearance
rates). The available evidence suggests that neither the police nor the
Procuracy is dismissing reports of such offenses. As exhibit 3.5 indicates,
in few cases do procurators obtain permission to try officials with
immunity, and in less than half of all cases do they obtain convictions.[79]
Although we do not know the total volume of potential offenses, these
numbers suggest that the police and Procuracy are conducting the struggle
against corruption with some integrity, or at least without excess regard
for the prospect of success at trial.[80]

What explains the low rate of success in prosecutions for misdemeanor
corruption? A study conducted by the Supreme Court in May 1998 (that
was not available for research) reportedly claims that in half of the cases
analyzed by the Court, the accused was not, legally, a public official
(dolzhnostnoe litso).[81] In another set of cases of unknown size, courts
discovered the elements of a crime and thus terminated misdemeanor
proceedings so that criminal charges would be drawn up. Furthermore,
judges at the Kyiv City Court claim that many cases are poorly prepared.
They send one-third of their cases back for supplementary investigation,
from which they rarely return. These judges maintain that detectives fail to
diligently execute the orders of investigators. Because defense counsels
are present in most corruption cases, many charges fail to stand up to
evidentiary scrutiny at trial.[82] Finally, corruption may be part of the
answer. The fact that, according to one scholar, some judges assign
penalties lower than the statutory minimum suggests that exchange
relations play a role here too.

Two factors combine to diminish the effectiveness of the campaign against
corruption, even in respect to those officials who are convicted. First, the
sanctions stipulated in the law are far too mild: Financial penalties
(between 25 and 50 monthly minimum wages, or approximately $250 to
$500) for corruption are negligible, especially when weighed against the
possible gains from such activity. Unfortunately, the prospect of change is
not great. The Rada is unlikely to endorse upward revisions in the scale of
penalties as long as its own members represent potential subjects of
misdemeanor prosecutions.[83] Second, the political will for punishing
corrupt officials is waning. Local authorities are not only reluctant to
allow prosecutions (only rarely are officials stripped of their immunity)
but they also intervene in the process of punishment. According to the
Council of Ministers, every second convicted official is not dismissed
from his or her position, despite the requirement of removal in the
corruption law. The national Government also appears to have washed its
hands of the corruption problem. In its most recent decree, the Council of
Ministers decried the formal implementation of the 1995 law but took no
new steps to reinvigorate the struggle.[84] In short, the problems in the
struggle against felony and misdemeanor corruption are as much political
as they are legal and organizational.[85] 

Organized crime

Ukraine moved quickly to develop an adequate machinery to combat what
it saw as organized crime (see the discussion in chapter 2 for details). In
July 1993, the Rada adopted the law, "On the Organizational-Legal
Foundations of the Fight Against Organized Crime," which not only
established an analytical bureau for the study of organized crime and
created a new office within the Presidency for coordinating the struggle
against it, but also introduced many new police powers.[86] Under the
law, the new special Administrations for Fighting Organized Crime
(UBOZ) within MVD and FSB (Federal Security Service, the successor to
the KGB) were empowered to (1) subpoena information from banks and
other commercial entities; (2) petition a court to suspend the licenses and
close down operations of commercial entities suspected of criminal acts;
(3) conduct wiretaps and searches and seizures, in some cases without a
warrant from the Procuracy; and (4) pay people to infiltrate or establish
commercial relations with suspected criminal organizations (articles 12
and 13). The same law also introduced the possibility of partial or
complete immunity for especially cooperative participants (article 14, part
2). A few months later, in December 1993, the Rada adopted another
helpful law, "On Ensuring the Safety of Participants in Criminal
Proceedings," which created protections for witnesses and victims of
crimes, including identity changes, work and residence relocations, and
provisions for dependent security.[87] In spring 2000, enhanced versions
of these protections were incorporated into the Code of Criminal
Procedure.[88] Together with laws that either introduced new crimes or
raised penalties for offenses committed by criminal groups, such as
extortion and racketeering, this legislation appeared to give the state
formidable weapons in the fight against organized crime.[89]

The data used by MVD in the fight against organized crime are
impressive, giving credence to the apparently contradictory claims that
organized crime is now a threat to national security and that it has been
successfully resisted.[90] According to MVD statistics, in the past 3 years,
3,189 organized criminal groups responsible for almost 20,000 crimes
have been exposed and destroyed (vyavleno i unichtozheno).[91] A closer
examination of the data, however, generates concern about the use of this
indicator as a measure of success in the fight against organized crime.
First, it is unclear what the terms "exposed" and "destroyed" and their
figures mean. Because MVD does not report data on convictions for
organized criminal groups, we have no idea how many of the destroyed
groups end up in prison. Second, there appears to be little attrition in the
war against organized crime. Each year, the same number of groups that is
destroyed reappears in the statistical ledgers of identified groups. Are the
ranks of organized criminal groups being constantly replenished by an
endless supply of deviants?[92] Third, the groups caught and destroyed are
not credited with a large number of crimes. In fact, the average number of
crimes allegedly committed by each organized group has declined, from
10 in 1991 to 7 in 1998 and 1999.[93] Although it is conceivable that this
decrease is a consequence of earlier detection and interdiction by the
police, it is more likely that this statistic represents the modest scale of
criminal activity of the groups caught. Finally, data on the character of the
crimes committed by organized groups confirm the finding presented in
chapter 2, that only minor groups are actually caught and brought to court.
Between 1990 and 1998, theft (kradizhka) accounted for between 35 and
50 percent of the offenses for which groups were charged. Although
robbery, extortion, and murder are becoming part of the repertoire of
groups caught, they remain a small percentage.

What accounts for the problems in fighting organized crime in Ukraine?
Why are only minor groups being caught? There are at least five kinds of
difficulties that merit attention. First, corruption and the complicity of
government in organized crime are serious obstacles to its investigation
and prosecution. According to a senior researcher in the President's
Coordinating Committee for the Fight Against Corruption and Organized
Crime, corruption is "the main obstacle in overcoming organized crime in
Ukraine."[94] Many forms of corruption are in fact indistinguishable from
organized crime. A significant percentage of those officials fined for 
misdemeanor corruption, for example, were charged with protecting or
failing to stop unlawful activities of economic entities under their
regulatory control.[95] This political patronage may well protect offenders
from the scrutiny of criminal investigators. It is not clear, however, that
complicity and corruption in the ranks of MVD are part of the problem in
tackling organized crime. According to senior officials in the Procurator
General's office, only a small percentage (6.8 percent) of investigations
conducted by the UBOZ are "terminated for nonrehabilitative reasons,"
which is a convenient way for police to get rid of unwanted cases.[96]
However, in light of the frequent allegations of police corruption from the
MVD itself, further research, including study of other potential indicators
of police complicity such as latent crime, should be conducted on this
question.[97]

Second, there is a significant problem with resources in the fight against
organized crime in Ukraine. Although its organized crime administration
enjoys a separate budget line in MVD's annual appropriations, the funds
are either inadequate or sequestered. Investigators report that there is not
always enough money to pay for expert testimony and laboratory work,
and they are sometimes faced with extortion. Experts may refuse to release
their reports and conclusions until cash has been paid in advance. There
are also many mundane problems associated with insufficient funding.
Shortages of cars, surveillance and crime scene equipment, and other
technology slow the work of investigators and hamper timely
prosecutions. Finally, investigators carry heavy caseloads and receive
little, if any, special training for their work.[98] Faced with the prospect of
low clearance rates at the end of each accounting period, investigators give
preference and greater attention to familiar cases that are easier to
solve.[99]

Third, there are problems in the organization, administration, and
coordination of the struggle against organized crime. Principal
responsibility for guiding the fight against organized crime rests with the
ephemeral-sounding Coordinating Committee for the Fight Against
Corruption and Organized Crime. Established in June 1993, the committee
was, in 1997, to be transformed into the National Bureau of Investigation
(NBR), the Ukrainian analogue of the FBI. A presidential edict creating
the NBR was issued, and consent to the creation of such an institution was
obtained from the Constitutional Court, but the Parliament failed to enact
enabling legislation; the NBR therefore remains an entity on paper only.
Little is known about the work and structure of the coordinating
committee. According to its secretary, its primary focus is not economic
crime but contract murders and the prevention of crimes against members
of the mass media.[100] Although the coordinating committee has met 47
times since 1993, it addressed the question of witness protection for the
first time in June 1999 and only recently finalized a unified system for
reporting organized crimes.[101] This information gives the impression
that the state has only just begun setting up the administrative machinery
for successfully fighting organized crime.

Fourth, there are many problems with interagency cooperation and rivalry,
perhaps because there is no permanent institution for directing the fight
against organized crime. The organized crime battlefield is therefore
institutionally overcrowded, with the tax inspectorate, customs agency,
central bank, security service, Procuracy, and police all competing for
jurisdiction and the rewards of successful prosecutions. The competition
between the Procuracy and police is especially problematic. In 1994,
special investigatory units for organized crime were created within the
departments of the Procuracy for overseeing legality in the fight against
organized crime. Although this practice yielded positive results, according
to a senior official from the Procuracy, these special units were dissolved
in 1997, and operative control of organized crime investigations reverted
to the organized crime unit within MVD, the UBOZ.[102] Even the
UBOZ, however, lack an investigatory monopoly; last year, approximately
40 percent of organized crimes were investigated by ordinary police.[103]
To some extent, then, the recent appointment of the Procurator General as
the new chairman of the coordinating committee may relieve some of
these tensions and settle some of the jurisdictional jealousy, likely in favor
of the Procuracy. But if past politics is a guide, administrative intrigue
begins only after the appointment of a new boss.

Finally, much to the dismay of police, Procuracy, and judges, Ukraine still
lacks a legal definition of organized crime. Nowhere in the Criminal Code
is the term "organized crime" authoritatively defined.[104] Most legal
scholars and legal officials lament this legal lacuna, but it is unclear how
this void hampers the fight against organized crime. There is ample room
for prosecutorial maneuvers in the provisions for complicity (souchastie)
in article 19, including liability for being an accomplice (souchastnik),
executor (ispolnitel), organizer (organizator), inciter (podstrekatel), and
facilitator or accessory (posobnik). Many articles of the code prescribe
enhancements for various forms of participation in proscribed conduct (not
only, for example, for banditry, an obvious group crime, but also for
murder, robbery, and so forth) as well as a slew of articles targeted at
illegal conduct commonly associated with organized crime groups (such as
article 1558, on Interfering With Legal Economic Activity). Furthermore,
official commentaries on the code, which lack legal force but nevertheless
give guidance to legal practitioners and are often consulted, help elucidate
the meaning of organized crime.[105]

The legal armory for combating organized crime in Ukraine is not much
inferior to that in Russia. Although Russia moved earlier to equip itself,
first by introducing amendments to the old Criminal Code in 1994, then by
adopting a new Criminal Code in 1996, the Ukrainian Criminal Code is
quite comparable to and, in respect to economic crimes, perhaps more
encompassing than Russia's. The only glaring inequality is the absence in
the Ukrainian code of a special norm analogous to article 210 of the
Russian code, citing liability and penalties for creating a criminal
organization.[106] But because Russia's fighting of criminal organizations
is not substantially superior to that of Ukraine, it is hard to see how legal
loopholes can help explain the limited success of law enforcement
agencies.

Perhaps the major legal impediment to combating organized crime in
Ukraine lies in the realm of procedural law. Although it has yet to be
shown that cases against organized groups fail because of difficulties in
gaining cooperation of codefendants, prosecutors in both Ukraine and
Russia face a number of difficulties in attempting to free accomplices from
criminal liability in exchange for their assistance. The criminal codes in
both countries contain provisions for excusing criminals from liability in a
variety of circumstances, such as a "change in the environment" and "due
to the disappearance of dangerousness in the offender," but this discretion
applies only if the offenses are not serious.[107] In addition, codes in both
countries contain norms that allow cooperative codefendants to be
rewarded for their testimony and assistance, but this form of sentencing
agreement requires the consent or complicity of the judge. Especially
because legal scholars in Ukraine complain that prosecutors are hamstrung
by the law and legal traditions discourage creativity and flexibility in
prosecutorial behavior, research on the contribution of criminal procedure
to the paucity of successful cases is needed.

A final ostensibly legal obstacle to successfully combating organized
groups may come from the working definition of organized crime, which
appears to rely heavily on stability or durability (ustoichivost) as the
defining attributes of an organized group. Almost all judges, investigators,
and procurators interviewed for this study complained about the
evidentiary difficulties of proving a group is stable. Here it appears that
myths about the Mafia and the early development of a sophisticated and
rather scholastic conceptual apparatus (fit only, perhaps, for the analysis of
groups in Sicily) may be hampering the prosecution of organized
crime.[108] Obviously, an authoritative definition of the term "organized
crime" in the code would assist legal officials, but the dearth of
prosecutions of major criminal groups cannot be attributed solely to legal
lacunae. Concerted state action to harmonize officials' concepts of the laws
and their meaning might be more effective in producing results than new
legislation.

The Future of Criminal Justice Reforms

As this overview of criminal justice in post-Soviet Ukraine has shown,
reforms have been modest, slow, and fitful. Periodic successes and
advances, such as the incorporation of amendments into the existing code,
may actually have slowed the reform process by diminishing the political
urgency of adopting a new Criminal Code and Code of Criminal
Procedure. For example, the introduction of stiffer sanctions for certain
politically sensitive offenses, such as economic crimes, from 1995 to 1997
fostered complacency in the movement to adopt new basic legislation.
Nevertheless, a version of the draft Criminal Code passed first reading in
the Rada in December 1998, and the code's general part (obshchaia chast'),
which lays out basic rules and principles (e.g., on punishments and key
concepts such as negligence and conspiracy) passed second reading in
June 2000.[109] It is unlikely, however, that even this first part will easily
gain final approval, for fundamental disagreements remain on key issues,
as well as specific arguments on smaller issues that may escalate into
factional or doctrinal disputes. A central sticking point will be the norms
governing conspiracy and complicity (souchastie) (chapter 6, articles 25 to
30), which are central to the prosecution of organized crime. There is, for
example, likely to be concern, if not alarm, over the open-ended
description of the means by which a facilitator (posobnik) can be deemed
to have assisted in the commission of a crime.[110] In addition, there are
what appear to be doctrinal disputes over the minimum number of persons
required for a crime to be deemed committed by an organized group. For
example, Oleg Litvak, the former Procurator General, insists it is nonsense
for two people (which, he points out, are in fact a pair) to continue to be
considered a group.[111] Another point of contention will be the
introduction of criminal liability for organizations and juridical persons
(iuridicheskikh lits), which may potentially harm economic interests.[112]
Finally, there promises to be much debate on the special part (osobennaia
chast') of the code, which defines and stipulates penalties for all offenses
but has yet to be examined as a whole by Parliament. Reportedly, deputies
and interested groups and agencies have submitted more than 1,200
proposals on this special part, with recommendations that include
punishment scales, the delimitation of offenses, and the allocation of
investigative jurisdiction.[113]

No less important to the reform of criminal justice and improved fight
against crime in Ukraine is the elaboration of a new Code of Criminal
Procedure. In July 1999, a working group under the auspices of the
Council of Ministers and chaired by V.T. Maliarenko, the head of the
Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, submitted a final
draft of the code to the Government. Before sending it to the Rada for
debate and first reading, however, the Council of Ministers reportedly
distributed the draft to certain scholars and institutions for further
commentary. Although such deliberative diligence is not unusual in
Ukrainian legislative politics, it is odd in the case of this law, as the
working group consisted of not only a broad array of leading specialists in
criminal procedure but also officials from numerous interested government
agencies. Whatever the reason for such caution in the development of this
legislation, it is not likely that the draft Code of Criminal Procedure will
receive a first reading in the Rada until winter 2001 at the earliest, after a
law on court organization has been adopted. Even then, a quick adoption
of this law is not expected because there are so many controversial issues.

Apart from doctrinal differences on appellate procedures and the proper
scope of review, there are likely to be long debates about summary
criminal proceedings during both pretrial investigation and trial.
Opposition to the abbreviation of criminal investigations and acceleration
of trials is primarily well meaning; opponents view such proposed
simplifications of criminal procedure as both dangerous incursions into the
rights of suspects and the accused and as echoes from the Stalinist past.
Without some form of plea bargaining or sentencing agreement, however,
it is hard to imagine a radical improvement in the fight against organized
(or even merely group) crime. Ukraine's system of criminal justice
presently lacks the means by which to sufficiently encourage, and reward,
the cooperation of codefendants.

Are there any lessons from the U.S. experience?

It is not clear whether there are any lessons to be learned from the U.S.
experience with organized crime. As shown both here and in chapter 2,
very little of what counts for organized crime in Ukraine resembles the
activities of groups prosecuted in the United States, such as those in New
York that have received detailed study.[114] Much of the advice on money
laundering, wiretapping, and other modern investigative and legislative
tactics for countering crime given by U.S. experts to Ukrainian prosecutors
and judges thus pertains to a small portion of the problem.[115] Moreover,
the United States has its own array of political and legal problems
thwarting successful use of legislation, especially the
Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statutes, targeted
at organized crime.[116] Perhaps it is these negative lessons that most
need to be conveyed. Nevertheless, for those areas dealing with
comparable criminological phenomena, there are three kinds of lessons.

The first lesson is broadly methodological and relates to the development
of useful criminological knowledge. Researchers will not advance
understanding of the sources or dynamics of organized crime in Ukraine or
elsewhere by studying cases of the successful prosecution of organized
criminal groups. Success in the formal prosecution of such groups in any
country is the rare exception, not the rule. At the very most, then, by
examining case files (the most common method employed by Ukrainian
criminologists) researchers will learn only about the least organized
groups, not the more resilient and important ones. The dataset for studies
of organized crime must therefore be unconventional and selected not on
the basis of legal categories but, rather, on sociological grounds.
Especially if, as some scholars have suggested, organized crime and
corruption are embryonic forms of social organization, criminologists
should select for closer study those sectors in public life from which such
formations likely derive their organizational inspiration and imprint. This
means detailed and quasi-anthropological studies of labor unions, farmers'
markets, police stations, and jails. Studies of this kind may help us
understand that which is unique about organized crime--namely, the
organizational principles and practices that constitute these groups and
enable them to survive.

The second lesson is legal. Ukraine will need more supple legal and
procedural tools with which to prosecute and convict organized criminal
groups. In the United States, conviction of organized criminals would not
have been possible without plea bargaining. Most of the well-known crime
figures and groups, such as the Gambino family, were initially charged
with a multitude of offenses but convicted only of one or two counts.[117]
Because evidence for the state's claims was and always will be weak in
such cases, law enforcement must be able to offer defendants incentives to
cooperate.

The third lesson pertains to policy. Ukraine will need not only genuine
political will to better fight organized and ordinary crime but also a variety
of policy tools. In the United States, criminal law has not been the sole or
even most effective tool in fighting organized crime. For example, most of
the success in New York came from the application of legal devices found
in administrative and civil law. Indeed, New York made its greatest
inroads into organized criminal families and corporations by obtaining
consent decrees and the right to monitor transactions within such entities.
As James Jacobs argues, the State of New York liberated itself from
organized crime by putting organized criminals out of business, not in
jail.[118] Of course, such a strategy requires strong regulatory capacity,
something that Ukraine now lacks. However, there is a long tradition of
state intervention in Ukraine's economy, from which some policy
entrepreneurship and vision might be revitalized.

---------------------------

Notes 

1. For a description of some of these obligations and the domestic pressure
they give rise to, see Koshiw, Jaroslaw, "Ukraine About to be Shut out of
Europe," Kiev Post, December 17, 1998, and the interview with Supreme
Court judge T. Prisiazhniuk, in Golos Ukrainy, January 8, 1999.

2. The current President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, recently issued a
decree sponsoring the development of a Law on Criminological Expertise,
which, if adopted, would require an assessment of the criminological
consequences of any new legislation to be conducted prior to the
consideration of new bills. For a description of this bill, and the problems
of financing such an enterprise, see Zakaliuk, A.P., "O vvedenii v Ukraine
kriminologicheskoi ekspertizy (Pro zaprovadjennia v Ukraini
kriminologichnoi ekspertizi)" Pravo Ukrainy, no. 7 (1999): 100-104.

3. For a more detailed description of Soviet criminal procedure, see
Osakwe, Christopher, "Modern Soviet Criminal Procedure, Tulane Law
Review 57 (1985): 439-601; for a description of the character of justice
administered in Soviet courts, see Solomon, Peter H., Jr., "The Case of the
Vanishing Acquittal: Informal Norms and the Practice of Soviet Criminal
Justice," Soviet Studies, 39 (4) (October 1987): 531-55, and Foglesong,
Todd S., "The Evolution of Criminal Justice and Development of Judicial
Dependence in Late Soviet Russia," in Solomon, Peter H., Jr. ed.,
Reforming Justice in Russia, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997: 282-304.

4. For a detailed description of the role of the Procuracy in the terror, and
analysis of the early system of justice in Soviet Russia, see Solomon, Peter
H., Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 1996.

5. For a discussion of the Procuracy in the post-Stalinist period, see
Huskey, Eugene, "The Administration of Justice: Courts, Procuracy, and
Ministry of Justice," in Executive Power and the Soviet State, ed. Eugene
Huskey, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1992: 221-48, and Smith, Gordon,
"The Struggle over the Procuracy," in Reforming Justice in Russia, ed.
Peter H. Solomon, Jr., 438-73 (see note 3).

6. As early as the 1960s, the Procuracy ceded to the police the
investigation of most ordinary crimes. The procuracy retained
responsibility for investigating murder, corruption, and major economic
offenses. The KGB had even more proscribed jurisdiction, investigating
only crimes against the state such as treason, sedition, and terrorism.

7. Sociological research by legal scholars in the late Soviet period
suggested that police investigators were the least qualified of all employed
jurists. See, for example, Shelley, Louise I., Policing Soviet Society: The
Evolution of State Control, London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

8. While judges everywhere dislike being overruled, the prospect of
reversal had special consequences for judges in Soviet Ukraine. Their
records on "stability of sentences" played a major role in their performance
rating, potential bonuses, professional reputation, and future
careers-including the likelihood of promotion and possibility of not being
renewed after the current 5-year term expired. Viktor Shishkin, the former
Procurator General, acknowledged this reality in a recent article, referring
to the "organizational consequences" that were often drawn in respect to
defiant or opinionated judges. See Shishkin, Viktor, "Problems and
Prospective Solutions for Establishing a Judiciary in Ukraine," Parker
School Journal of East European Law 3 (1) (1996): 31-40.

9. A more detailed description of these and other rules of criminal
procedure in Ukraine can be found in Sergey Chapkey and Vladimir
Tochilovsky, "Ukraine," World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems,
available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov.bjs/pub. 

10. Ninety-five percent of all rulings to terminate criminal proceedings
concerned cases of private prosecution (insult; slander, and inflicting light
bodily injury). For data on terminations, see "Prilozheniia," Prestupnost v
Ukraine, no. 2 (1994).

11. By law, pretrial detention was limited to 2 months. However, the Code
of Criminal Procedure made ample provision for extensions, in the event
of "difficult" investigations. It was not unusual for investigators to get
extensions up to 6 months, and not very rare for pretrial incarceration in
truly complicated cases to last 18 months.

12. A powerful economic rationale undergirded penal policy in Soviet
Ukraine: Both prisons and other forms of punishment played a significant
role in Soviet economic development. See, for example, Swianiewicz,
Stanislaw, Forced Labor and Economic Development: An Enquiry into the
Experience of Soviet Industrialization, London: Oxford University Press,
1965.

13. For a more detailed study of police and prosecutorial practices in the
pretrial stage, see Foglesong, Todd S., "The Politics of Judicial
Independence and the Administration of Criminal Justice in Soviet Russia,
1982-1992, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto,
Department of Political Science, 1995, chapter 3.

14. For an inventory of these practices, see Zelenetskii, V.S.,
Vozbuzhdenie ugolovnogo dela, Kharkov, 1998: 6-23.

15. See the discussion of the meaning of these terms in Berman, Harold,
"The Rule of Law and the Law-Based State (Rechtsstaat)," Harriman
Institute Forum 4-5 (1991).

16. Judges elected for the first time were given probationary 5-year terms.
For more on the 1992 Law on the Status of Judges, see Halustick, Lisa,
"Judicial Reform in Ukraine: Legislative Efforts to Promote and
Independent Judiciary," Parker School Journal of East European Law 1,
(5-6) (1994): 663-86. In Russia, by contrast, the 1992 Law on the Status of
Judges conferred life tenure upon judges. For a more detailed account of
the movement for judicial independence in Russia, see Solomon, Peter H.,
Jr., and Todd S. Foglesong, Courts and Transition: The Challenge of
Judicial Reform in Russia, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000,
chapter 2.

17. For a recent Ukrainian account of these developments, see Bryntsev,
V.D., Sudebnaia Vlast (Pravosudie): Puti reformirovaniia v Ukraine,
Kharkov, 1998. For an account by a North American, see Ratushny, Kim,
"Towards the Independence of Judges in Ukraine?" forthcoming in
Saskatchewan Law Review 62:2.

18. See Bryntsev, V.D., Sudebnaia vlast (Pravosudie): 33 (see note 17);
Halustick, 676-7 (see note 16).

19. For accounts of these problems, see the Daily Report: Ukraine,
published by FBIS, July 6, 1993, pp. 70-72; November 14, 1994, 49-50,
and the Ukrainian Supreme Court's resolution no. 4, April 12, 1996, "On
Applying Legislation That Ensures the Independence of Courts," in
Ukrainski Chasopis Prav Liudini nos. 3-4, 1997: 157-64.

20. For an account of the origins of the Conception of Judicial Reform, see
the interview with V. V. Onopenko, the former Minister of Justice, in
Khreshchatyk, August 1, 1995, 3. A draft Conception was prepared in
1995 by Vasilii Onopenko, the Minister of Justice from 1993 to 1994, but
never endorsed by Parliament. For a description of some of the ideas in the
unrealized Conception, see Onopenko, V., "Sudebno-pravovaia reforma:
tsel' i sredstva," Golos Ukrainy, October 27, 1998, 8. 

21. Only at the end of 1999 was a draft of the new Conception of Judicial
Reform completed. It has yet to be submitted to the legislature for review.
See the interview with Boiko, the Chairman of the Supreme Court, in
"Vtoroe obnovlenie tretei vlasti," Golos Ukrainy, December 7, 1999, p.
9-11.

22. For accounts of the politics of Ukrainian constitutionalism, see
Wolczuk, Kataryna, "The Politics of Constitution Making in Ukraine," in
Contemporary Ukraine: Dynamics of Post-Soviet Transformation, ed.
Taras Kuzio, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998: 118-38, and Wilson,
Andrew, "Kuchma," in Post-Communist Presidents, ed. Ray Taras,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

23. For an outline of the Court's functions, and a review of the first two
years of its decisions, see Futey, Bohdan, "Upholding the Rule of Law in
Ukraine: The Judiciary in Transition," unpublished paper presented at the
University of Ottawa, October 2-3, 1998. See also the remarks of Anatolii
Selivanov and Evgenii Marchuk, in "Tsel' pravosudiia," Golos Ukrainy,
December 15, 1998, 10-11. It should be noted that the creation of the
Court did not immediately resolve the question over the power to review
the Constitutionality of laws and normative acts. Less than a month after
the Constitutional Court first convened, the Supreme Court ruled that the
courts of general jurisdiction could also apply the Constitution when
subordinate legislation was found to be in contravention of its provisions.
See the report by Sergei Demskii, "Primenenie Konstitutsii Ukrainy vo
vremia provedeniia sudoproizvodstva," Golos Ukrainy, November 6,
1996, 3.

24. In 1998, 877 of 2,648 (i.e., 33 percent) who contested their custody in
these hearings were released from jail. Data furnished by the Ministry of
Justice. For studies of earlier court practice, see Klochkov, V.G., Sudebnyi
kontrol za sobliudeniem zakonnosti i obosnovannosti primeneniia mery
presecheniia-zakliuchenie pod strazhu, Kyiv, 1998, and Korzh, V.P.,
Uchastie prokurora v rassmotrenii materialov sudebnoi proverki o
zakonnosti i obosnovannosti aresta (uchebno-metodicheskoe posobie),
Kharkiv, 1997.

25. For an American account of bail reform in Ukraine, see Lehman,
Christopher, "Legal Reform in Ukraine: Life in the Trenches,"
Demokratizatsiya 7 (2) (Spring 1999): 228-40.

26. For a description of some of the options under consideration, see the
interview with Vasilii Maliarenko, the Head of the Criminal Division of
the Supreme Court, "Sud prisiazhnykh: novaia nadezhda ili problema?"
Golos Ukrainy, January 20, 1999, 3.

27. For a detailed account of the development of this legislation, written
by the Academy of Legal Science's Institute for the Study of Crime in
Kharkov, see Tsibileva, N.V., and M.V. Khotenets, "Problemy realizatsii
konstitutsionnykh printsipov v postroenii sudebnoi sistemy Ukrainy,"
unpublished report, 1999.

28. Interview with Oksana Vinogradova, Head of the Department of
Judicial Reform, Ministry of Justice, April 19, 1999. See also Onopenko,
Vasil, "Konstitutsiia Ukrainy i sudoproizvodstvo: raskhozhdeniia i
paradoksy," Golos Ukrainy, April 14, 1999, 6.

29. Interview with O. M. Paseniuk, the Deputy Minister of Justice,
February 3, 1999. Paseniuk, a former judge, argues that it benefits the
courts to have the Ministry of Justice in charge of finance, since the
Ministry's budget covers more than just courts, and it can move moneys
across categories, for example from the Notary or Bar, and possibly
prisons (unless the Department of Corrections is established at the
National level), to the judiciary. 

30. Udovenko, Genadii, "Problemy reformirovaniia pravosudiia v
Ukraine," Golos Ukrainy, June 16, 1999, 4.

31. Paseniuk, the Deputy Minister of Justice, claimed that the Council of
Ministers in 1996 (before the adoption of the Constitution) suggested that
the courts be financed from local budgets. Judges at the Kyiv City Court
acknowledged this, and referred to a CM Decree no. 1313, from 1997.
They also reported a more recent contradictory ruling of the Council of
Ministers which forbids local governments from such discretionary
spending-that is, using money in ways "not already stipulated" (ne po
naznacheniiu). Interviews, April 20, 1999.

32. See "Verkhovny sud v sude, konstitutsionnom," Golos Ukrainy, June
19, 1999, 3.

33. See "Sudiam, gosudarstvenuiu zashchitu," Golos Ukrainy, December
3, 1998, 2. 

34. See the interviews with Valerii Evdokimov, the Chairman of the
Higher Council of Justice, "Komu doveriat' sudeiskuiu mantiiu," Golos
Ukrainy, January 14, 1999, 3, and "Sudoustroistvo: poiski optimalnogo
varianta," Golos Ukrainy, September 28, 1999, 5.

35. See Volcansek, Mary, and Jacqueline Lucienne Lafon, Judicial
Selection: The Cross Evolution of French and American Practices, New
York, Greenwood Press, 1998, and Friedland, Martin L., A Place Apart:
Judicial Independence in Canada, Ottawa, Canadian Judicial Council,
1995.

36. Compare articles 106 and 128 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

37. See Zamanskii, Vladimir, "President Kuchma: 'Ia obrashchus' k narodu
i skazhu: idite demonstratsiei k Verkhovnomu Sudu za zarplatami i
pensiiami," Kievskie vedomosti, February 11, 1999, 12. More recently,
Kuchma derided a decision of the Kyiv City Court that annulled the results
of mayoral elections due to irregularities and violations of the election
law. Kuchma claimed the court "trampled the will of thousands of Kyiv
voters." RFE-RL Newsline 3 (142) July 23, 1999.

38. Sirenko, "Bez parlamentskogo kontrolia, pravovoe gosudarstvo
nevozmozhno," Golos Ukrainy, October 13, 1998, 3.

39. See the interview with Kravchenko, in FBIS, January 5, 1999. For
example, almost 10 percent of the personnel in the Minsk District
Department of Internal Affairs is paid for by the Kyiv city, not national,
government. Interview with Head of the Minsk District Division of
Internal Affairs, Kyiv, April 17, 1999.

40. Most of the officials relieved of their duties come from the GAI and
Prisons. See the interviews with V. Lytvynenko, Deputy Head of the Main
Administration for Fighting Organized Crime and Corruption of the MVD,
FBIS, November 7, 1998, and Minister Kravchenko, FBIS, October 20,
1998. According to Kravchenko, the MVD employs a total of 220,000
people. See "Zvit pered ukrainskim narodom pro operativno-sluzhbov
diialnost organiv vnutrizhnikh sprav u 1998 rotsi," Imenem zakonu, no.7
(1999), 7. The numbers for 1999 were reported by Anufriev, the Deputy
Minister of the Interior, in "Chuzhie pogony," Golos Ukrainy, July 14,
1999, 4.

41. Some of these problems are discussed in the interview with M.
Korniyenko, a Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, FBIS, December 3,
1998.

42. See the interview with Kravchenko, "Ministra nikogda ni zabirala
militsiia," Golos Ukrainy, July 11, 1998, 11. For a more sophisticated
analyses of the results of such studies, see Kulik, A.G., "Otnoshenie
naseleniia k militsii," in Prestupnost v Ukraine, no. 2 (1994), 65-79, and
Zelenetskii, Vozbuzhdenie ugolovnogo dela, 18-19 (see note 14).

43. See, for example, "Kriminogennaia situatsiia v g. Kharkove," the
results of a research project conducted jointly by the Kharkov City
Government and University of Internal Affairs. More recently, senior
researchers at the University of Internal Affairs in Kharkov launched a
new project investigating the "effectiveness of police-public interactions"
(Faktory effektivnosti vzaimovsiazi militsii s naseleniem), the results of
which are due next year.

44. One internal administrative problem worth investigating concerns the
relationships within police departments. Many observers claim there are
strained relations between detectives (rozysk), on the one hand, and
investigators on the other. Detectives are evaluated by the number of
criminal cases opened (vozbuzhdennykh), and thus have little incentive to
fulfill the orders (porucheniia) of investigators, who are evaluated on the
basis of completed cases (okonchennykh). See the discussion of this
problem in M. Potebenko, "Vremia trebuet ne slov, a deistvii," Golos
Ukrainy, August 21, 1998, 3.

45. See Vasilev, G., "Cherez pravoporiadok-k obshchemu poriadku,"
Golos Ukrainy, September 17, 1998, 3.

46. For examples of the arguments in favor of general supervision, see
Chernenko, N., "Prokuror dolzhen imet' pravo," Golos Ukrainy, May 26,
1999, p. 10, and Davydov, V., and N. Rudenko, "Prokuror na zashchite
gosudarstva i grazhdanina," Golos Ukrainy, October 13, 1998, 11.

47. Ironically, one of the most ardent advocates of limiting the jurisdiction
of the Procuracy is Shishkin, a member of parliament who was Procurator
General from 1991 to 1993.

48. For Potebenko's most recent arguments, see "Reformy i institut
prokurorskogo nadzora," Golos Ukrainy, December 1, 1998, p. 10, and
"Prokuratura na strazhe prav cheloveka," Golos Ukrainy, June 12, 1999, p.
8. For the views of the President of Ukraine's Academy of Legal Sciences,
see Tatsii, V., "Chto goditsia dlia Londona, prezhdevremenno dlia Kieva,"
Golos Ukrainy, April 10, 1999, 3.

49. For a report on judicial practices in 1996 and 1997, see "Sudova
statistika," in Visnik Verkhovnogo Sudu, no. 1 (1998).

50. Special Report prepared for this study by the Ministry of Justice. In
Russia, by contrast, only one of every five of habeas petitions in the last
two years was successful. Foglesong, Todd S., "Habeas Corpus or Who
Has the Body? Judicial Review of Arrest and Detention In Russia,"
Wisconsin International Law Journal 14 (3) (Summer 1996): 541-578.

51. Statistical Survey prepared for this report by the Ministry of Justice.

52. See "Sudova statistika," in Visnik Verkhovnogo Sudu, no. 1 (1998):
43-45.

53. See Bryntsev, Sudebnaia vlast (Pravosudie) (see note #17).

54. Kulik, "Otnoshenie naseleniia k militsii," 66.

55. See Kravchenko's comments in FBIS, January 5, 1999. For recent
published data on the effectiveness of the police, see "Zvit pered
Ukrainskim narodom pro operativno-sluzhbovu diialnost; organiv
vnutrishnikh sprav u 1998 rotsi," Imenem Zakonu, no. 7 (1999) .

56. See the MVD's Instruktsiia pro edinii oblik zlochiniv (Instructions on
Uniform Registration of Crimes).

57. Some police officials are willing to countenance changes to the
system. Kirichenko, the Deputy Minister of the Interior who supervises
academic research institutes under the auspices of the MVD, says that
establishing new criteria for the evaluation of effective police work is a
high priority and claims that a senior MVD official is preparing to write a
dissertation on the topic.

58. Prestupnost v Ukraine, no. 2 (1994). 

59. Ukrainian researchers are also hampered by the system of data
collection and the use of indiscriminate reporting categories by the state.
For example, in the best study of the prosecution of economic crime in
Ukraine, authors report that 75 percent of all prosecutions in Kharkov
were for articles 154 and 155 (speculation and a host of other forms of
unlawful means of acquiring wealth. Because the data is not broken down
by subsection of article 155, it is impossible to know how serious the
offenses and prosecutions were in these cases, thus making an intelligent
assessment of performance impossible.

60. Interviews. This same chief of police estimated the real murder rate as
twice the reported level. Other policemen I interviewed told stories of
bodies being moved across district boundaries for the same purpose.

61. See the discussion in Zelenetskii, Vozbuzhdenie ugolovnogo dela,
6-14 (see note 14).

62. Interviews.

63. Interview with A.P. Zakaliuk, one of the drafters of the program of
study.

64. See Zelenetskii, Vozbuzhdenie ugolovnogo dela, 6-23 (see note 14).

65. See Kulik, A.G., "Mezhdunarodnyi opros zhertv prestuplenii v Kieve," 
unpublished paper.

66. Interview with V. Sobolev, Head of the Department of Sociology at
the University of Internal Affairs, Kharkov.

67. So far, Ukrainian researchers have only employed extensive and
expensive methods to study this problem. Instead of using anthropological
or ethno-methodological approaches to the study of latent crime,
criminologists have relied solely on survey-based means of gauging the
levels of unreported crime.

68. This conclusion contradictions the findings of A.M. Bandurka, a
member of parliament and rector (president) of the University of Internal
Affairs in Kharkov, who implies that the problem with concealing crimes
diminished in 1994. See Bandurka, A.M., and A.F. Zelinskii, Vandalizm
(Kharkiv, 1994): 4.

69. See the discussion in Zelenetskii, Vozbuzhdenie ugolovnogo dela (see
note 14).

70. Kulik, A.G., and B.I. Bobyr, "Obshchaia tendentsiia prestupnosti v
Ukraine v 1972-1993 gg. i prognoz na blizhaishie gody," Prestupnost v
Ukraine (Biulleten zakonodavstva i iuridichnoi prakitiki Ukraini), no. 2
(1994): 5-37; Kulik and Bobyr suggest police dismiss only reports of
minor offenses.

71. These offenses include unlicensed or fictitious entrepreneurial activity,
many forms of commercial and bank fraud (e.g., deceiving customers and
suppliers), tax evasion, exposing commercial secrets, bootlegging,
counterfeiting, services extortion, price collusion and fixing, false
bankruptcies, and others.

72. Draft report by Kalman, A., "Problemy povysheniia effektivnosti
pravoprimenitelnoi praktiki borby s ekonomicheskoi prestupnostiu v
Ukraine," Kharkiv, April 1999.

73. Kalman, O.G., I. O Khristich, and Iu. G. Boiko, "Uzagalnennia
praktiki borot'bi zi zlochinnostiu u sferi eknomichnoi diialnosti
pravookhoronnikh ta pravozastosovchikh organiv kharkovskoi oblasti za
1992-1997 rr.," Pitannia borot'bi zi zlichinnostiu (Kharkov, 1998).

74. Ukrainian researchers are clearly hampered by the control over data
collection and the use of indiscriminating categories by the state. For
example, in the best study of the prosecution of economic crime, authors
report that 75 percent of all prosecutions in Kharkov were for articles 154
and 155, speculation and a host of other offenses. Because the data is not
broken down by subsection of article 155, it is impossible to know the
gravity of the offenses and prosecutions.

75. According to Decree No. 1220 of the Council of Ministers from
August 3, 1998, "On the status of implementing legislation on state service
and the struggle against corruption by central and local agencies of
executive power," 296,819 civil servants were employed in 1997.

76. For data on the number of registered crimes, see "Osnovnye tendentsii 
prestupnosti i sudimosti v Ukraine v 1994-1998 gg.," with attached tables,
unpublished 1999. 

77. Vseukrainskie vedomosti, November 14, 1995, p. 3.

78. The three main offenses for which civil servants or elected officialsere
charged in both 1997 and 1998 were: 1) "illegal receipt of material
benefits, services, privileges, and other goods" in exchange for the
fulfillment of state duties; 2) "engaging in entrepreneurial activity directly
or via intermediaries or through persons under one's regulatory authority;"
and 3) violating rules on the declaration of income. Together, these three
categories constituted nearly three-fourths of all forms of prosecuted
misdemeanor corruption. An additional 693 individuals were fined for
violating article 184 of the Code of Administrative Infractions (i.e.,
improper use of state property).

79. A recent report by the Secretary of the Coordinating Committee for the
Fight Against Corruption and Organized Crime claims that two-thirds of
all cases "collapse" in court. See "K sotrudnichestvy i
vzaimodeistviiu-odin KROK," Golos Ukrainy, June 26, 1999, 12.

80. For a recent study, see the "Survey of the Struggle of the Law
Enforcement Agencies Against Corruption in the Ukraine," Organized
Crime Watch 1 (6) (December 1999).

81. Decree no. 13 from May 25, 1998.

82. Interview with Kiev City Court judges.

83. See the interview with V. Lytvynenko, Deputy Head of the Main
Administration of the Ministry of the Interior, FBIS, November 7, 1998.

84. See Decree No. 1220 of the Council of Ministers from August 3, 1998.

85. For the government's own assessment of the relative weights of these
factors, see the program "On the Concept of Struggle Against Corruption
for the Years 1998-2005," adopted by the President of Ukraine, April 24,
1998.

86. See "Ob organizatsiono-pravovykh osnovakh borby s organizovannoi
prestupnostiu," in Zakonodatelstvo Ukrainy o borbe s prestupnostiu,
Kharkiv, 1999, 204-230. Oddly, the law used the diminutive form of the
word "group" (gruppirovka, not gruppa).

87. See the Law "Ob obespechenie bezopasnosti lits, uchastvuiushchikh v
ugolovnom sudoproizvodstve," published in Zakonodatelstvo Ukrainy o
bor'be s prestupnostiu, 175-87.

88. For example, witnesses may now make identifications without
suspects seeing them, and the state can conduct undercover operations
against individuals who may present a threat to witnesses. See
"Parlamentskaya khronika," Golos Ukrainy, October 23, 1999, p. 3, and
"O vnesenii izmenenii v nekotorye zakonodatelnye akty Ukrainy, Golos
Ukrainy, March 1, 2000, p. 3.

89. See especially articles 1553, 1555, 1556, 1557, and 1558 of the current
Criminal Code.

90. For example, the chief of staff of the MVD (nachalnik glavnogo
shtaba) presented a glitzy slide show on the successes in the fight against
organized crime, replete with pie charts and sophisticated tables that I was
later not allowed to examine more closely.

91. Glushkov, A.V., "Sostoianie borby s organizovannoi prestupnostiu,"
unpublished paper, 11. According to a Russian criminologist, in 1996
alone, more than 9,000 groups involving 60,000 persons were "stopped"
(presechena). Alekseev, A.I., Kriminologiia: kurs lektsii, Moscow:
Kriminologicheskaia assosiatsiia, 1999: 199. The Procuracy's Research
Institute on Problems of Improving Legality and Legal Order reported
similar successes. See Organizovannaia prestupnost-4, Moscow, 1998:
258-9.

92. See Zlochinnost v Ukraine, 40-1.

93. See the discussion above, chapter 2, pp. 39-43.

94. See Glushkov, "Sostoianie borby s organizovannoi prestupnostiu v
Ukraine," (informatsionnaia spravka), unpublished, 1999: 26.

95. See the interview with Aleksandr Voitsekhovskii, Secretary of the
Coordinating Committee for the Fight Against Corruption and Organized
Crime, "K sotrudnichestvu i vzaimodeistviu-odin 'KROK,'" Golos
Ukrainy, June 26, 1999, 12.

96. Interview with V.V. Korol, head of the Department for Supervising
Legality in Organs of Criminal Investigation, Detection, and Inquiry of the
MVD, Office of Procurator General, April 22, 1999.

97. Research by Louise Shelley on corruption among incarcerated former
police officers suggests an interesting method for studying law
enforcement complicity. See, for example, Report on Research and
Activities, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, January 4, 1999,
Attachment E.

98. Although central officials claim all investigators charged with solving
organized or economic crimes receive special training, investigators in
local police departments insist they received little instruction prior to
accepting their new briefs. Interviews, Minsk District Department of
Internal Affairs, Kyiv, and Kuriazhy District Department of Internal
Affairs, Kharkiv.

99. As O.R. Protsuk, a senior procurator in the Department for Supervising
Legality in Organs of Criminal Investigation, Detection, and Inquiry of the
MVD, put it, "When you work on a conveyor belt and the clock is ticking
(kogda sroki podzhimaiut), you tackle cases that are easy to solve."
Interview, April 22, 1999.

100. See Voitsekhovskii, "K sotrudnichestvy i vzaimodeistviu-odin
KROK," Golos Ukrainy, June 26, 1999, 12.

101. Data from the Coordinating Committee and MVD do not always
track. Compare, for example the information from the CC in Glushkov,
"Sostoianie borby," with the claims of V. Melnikov, Deputy Minister of
the Interior, in FBIS, Nov 5, 1998.

102. Vasilev, G., "Cherez pravoporiadok-k obshchemu poriadku," Golos
Ukrainy, September 17, 1998, 3. According to other procurators,
investigators in the UBOP do not receive special training, and differ little
from rank-and-file police detectives.

103. Interviews with Korol, Protsuk, and A.V. Kovalenko, the head of the
Department of International Cooperation of the Procuracy General.

104. See the interview with V. Lytvynenko, deputy head of the Main
Administration of the Ministry of the Interior, FBIS, November 7, 1998.

105. See, for example, the Ugolovnyi Kodeks Ukrainy: Kommentarii,
Kyiv, 1998, edited by S.S. Iatsenko, 647.

106. For a discussion of the problems with this norm in Russia, see
Kupriianov, A., "Ispolzovanie sluzhebnogo polozheniia pri uchastii v
prestupnom soobshchestve," Rossiiskaia iustitsiia, no. 2 (2000): 43.

107. V.M. Groshevoi, the vice president of the Academy of Legal
Sciences and the preeminent scholar of criminal procedure in Ukraine,
voiced concerns about this issue in particular. Interview, February 1999.

108. See the discussion in Zelinskii, Kriminologiia: kurs lektsii, Kharkov:
Prapor, 1996: 198-208.

109. Personal communication with V.I. Borisov, deputy director of the
Kharkiv Center for the Study of Organized Crime, May 10, 2000.

110. The first part of the current text of paragraph 5, article 26, reads: "A
facilitator is one who by his advice or instructions, or by making available
the means or implements of a crime, or by removing obstacles to the
commission of a crime, or by other means (ili inym obrazom) renders
assistance to the commission of a crime by other participants . . ." (italics
added).

111. Under the existing Criminal Code, a group is "two or more persons."
For Litvak's views, see Litvak, Oleg, "Prava na oshchibku net: zametki po
povodu odnovo iz proektov ugolovnogo kodeksa Ukrainy," Golos
Ukrainy, July 7, 1998, 7.

112. See, for example, the discussion in Smitienko, V., and G. Agafonov,
"Otvetstvennost iuridicheskikh lits-nasushchnaia problema
ugolovno-pravovogo regulirovaniia," Golos Ukrainy, March 5, 1996, 9.

113. Phone interview with A.P. Zakaliuk, July 23, 1999.

114. See, for example, Jacobs, James, Gotham Unbound: How New York
City Was Liberated From the Grip of Organized Crime, New York: New
York University Press, 1999.

115. See, for example, the proceedings of a conference on prosecuting
transnational crimes at Syracuse University in fall 1999, Syracuse Journal
of International Law and Commerce 27 (1) (Winter 2000).

116. See, for example, the Department of Justice studies, "Prosecuting
Criminal Enterprises: Federal Offenses and Offenders," and "Local
Prosecution of Organized Crime: The Use of State RICO Statutes,"
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstact/lpooc.htm

117. See, for example, the account in Jacobs, Gotham Unbound (see note
114).

118. Ibid.

---------------------------

Soviet and Post-Soviet Criminology in Ukraine

Criminology in post-Soviet Ukraine, like its counterpart in the Russian
Federation, constituted an applied field of social research based mainly on
legal categories and reflecting few, if any, developments in Western
sociological theory since World War II. The field was also underfunded
and lacked both a sufficient number of established senior scholars and an
inflow of young talent. To understand why criminology in Ukraine was
underdeveloped calls for examining the history of Soviet criminology in
general as well as in the Republic of Ukraine. After a brief review of this
history, the main institutions and research focuses of Ukrainian
criminology today will be described.

In the first decade after the Russian Revolution, native criminology
developed an impressive set of institutions and activities. Young legal and
medical researchers succeeded in gaining sponsorship from governments
ranging from the federal to the city level and establishing a major research
institute in Moscow (the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the
Criminal) and a series of research offices (kabinety) in a number of cities,
including Odessa, and later Kyiv and Kharkiv. Although, like their
European counterparts, Soviet scholars treated criminology as primarily a
legal science; their research was interdisciplinary and included both
sociological-statistical study of crime and biopsychological examinations
of criminal offenders. But its disciplinary home in law did not save
criminology from the destruction that befell all social research. In 1929,
young Marxist scholars attacked the clinical side of Soviet criminology as
neo-Lombrosian (after the Italian positivist criminologist Cesare
Lombrosio, who studied the physical features of criminals, such as the size
of their crania) and therefore anti-Marxist. Not long afterward even the
purely sociological studies (e.g., of recidivism or alcoholism and crime)
also stopped. Stalin and his fellow leaders found any empirical research
(or reality testing) more threatening than useful, and all (largely
embryonic) forms of social research died out in the 1930s.[1]

The revival of empirical social research became a progressive cause after
Stalin's death, and the first efforts at small-scale criminological studies
were undertaken behind the closed doors of the Procuracy's new Institute
for Police Science, founded in 1957. By 1963, the proponents of
criminology succeeded in getting the profile of this institute broadened
and its name changed to the All-Union Institute for the Study of the
Causes and Elaboration of Measures of Preventing Crime. Obviously a
mouthful in any language, the institute was known for decades (even when
its formal name changed again to the Research Institute for the
Strengthening of Legality, Law, and Order) as the Procuracy Institute.[2] 

The revival of criminology was approved by party authorities on the
grounds that empirical (or "concrete sociological") research would
improve law enforcement and reduce crime, thereby making a practical
contribution. But the keepers of the ideology insisted that the reality
testing not challenge party doctrine or dogma. Since 1930, crime was
officially understood as a remnant of the bourgeois capitalist order, foreign
to Soviet social structure, and on the decline. As late as 1960, no one could
publish anything to the contrary. But it was difficult to develop any kind
of criminology on this basis, and, during the 1960s and 1970s,
criminologists struggled to expand their domain. In the early 1960s, A.B.
Sakharov helped make the offender's personality a legitimate object of
study, even though he understood personality as a social-psychological--
and not biologically determined--structure. A few years later, I.S. Noi (of
Saratov) pushed farther to get recognition of the role, however limited, of
biological factors in crime causation, thereby facing head-on the original
ideological objection to criminology. Finally, beginning in 1968, Vladimir
Kudriavtsev developed a multifactorial vector-based theory of crime
causation that integrated and gave place to a wide variety of primary and
secondary factors. Kudriavtsev's original theory, developed with little
knowledge of Western scholarship, was, in its integrative power,
analogous to Sutherland's theory of differential association, but it
represented macrotheory rather than theory of the middle range and did
not generate researchable hypotheses.[3]

The unwillingness of the Soviet leadership to recognize, at least publicly,
that crime was endemic to socialist as well as capitalist society had
another unfortunate consequence, namely the keeping secret of all
statistics on crime and on the processing of crime cases. At most,
criminologists who gained access to official data were allowed to present
analyses in percentage terms and, even then, many studies were placed
under the restrictive category "for internal use only."

Who were the new Soviet criminologists? They were mainly specialists in
criminal law (and a few psychologists) who somehow managed to learn
about techniques of statistical analysis and perhaps survey research. From
the 1960s through the mid-1980s, there were no sociologists available to
study crime or deviance, for all forms of social research had been stopped
under Stalin, and practitioners of the newly revived sociology had great
trouble gaining a foothold in universities; all sociology was taught as a
subfield of philosophy, and few sociologists were produced until the late
1980s. From the mid-1960s, criminology became a compulsory subject in
law faculties, and a professor at every institution training jurists had to
teach it. Criminology research, however, was concentrated in two large
research institutes in Moscow: the Procuracy Institute already mentioned
(which, at its peak, had nearly 200 researchers, half doing criminological
study) and, from the 1970s, the Research Institute of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs. The latter quickly became the main center for studies of
penal institutions, their inmates, and policing, while the former
concentrated on studying the causes and prevention of various kinds of
crime. In the 1970s, criminologists succeeded in convincing many legal
officials that criminal justice had to prevent crime as well as repress
criminals and, for a while, criminal policy came to reflect this
emphasis.[4] At no time, however, was serious extended study of the
behavior of police and legal officials attempted. Sociology of criminal law
remained underdeveloped.

In the late 1970s, the study of victimology began to grow, but on the
whole, the intellectual framework of Soviet criminology did not grow
beyond its ruling paradigm. For one thing, criminological theory did not
advance beyond the multifactorial theories of the 1970s, including the
major Western developments from the 1950s to the present-stigma or
interactionist theory; the advances in theories of strain and opportunity;
the critical or neo-Marxist criminology developed especially in England;
the Foucaultian, poststructuralist theory; or the application to criminology
of risk theories. Post-Sutherland sociological theories of crime, including
those set forth by Robert Merton, Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin, and
Theodore Becker and the interactionists, were analyzed for Soviet
audiences in 1971 by A.M. Iakovlev, but the ideas were not absorbed into
mainstream Soviet criminology, nor did they have an impact on research
agendas.[5] Few criminologists traveled abroad (even to conferences), and
those who did understood the limitations under which they had to work.

When Ukraine became independent at the end of 1991, it inherited a
modest study of criminology. There were no major criminological research
centers (all were in Moscow), and what research existed was conducted
mostly by faculty at the various police academies and legal training
institutions. At the same time, the theoretical and methodological scope of
criminology in Ukraine was limited. Studies of crime and its causes had a
narrow, applied approach, and categories or concepts were largely legal
rather than sociological in nature. Obviously, there was a shortage of
senior scholars ready to step into the breach, and government
underfunding of all science (due to the economic collapse) made careers in
legal and social science unattractive to bright and ambitious young
people.[6]

In this context, the institutional development of post-Soviet Ukrainian
criminology is remarkable. As of 1999, there were at least three major
centers of criminological research in Ukraine (one in Kyiv and two in
Kharkiv), and research was being conducted in many other places as well.
Police scholars took the lead, with a large number of criminologists
employed at the National Academy of Internal Affairs (the former Police
Higher School) in Kyiv and the University of Internal Affairs in Kharkiv,
both of which are police training institutes. The National Academy of
Internal Affairs (NAIA) is home to two groups of criminologists: one
working in the many laboratories of its research institute, and another in its
department (kafedra) of criminology. Although the department of
criminology is staffed by able teachers, few conduct applied research. The
academy's leadership includes First Vice Chancellor V.I. Shakun, a
prolific criminologist with several works on urbanization and crime, but
whose research is not very empirical. The bulk of the academy's applied
criminological research therefore takes place under the aegis of its
research institute, a former branch of the All-Union Research Institute of
the U.S.S.R. MVD.

The Government, often the MVD, commissions most of the criminological
research at the NAIA Research Institute. This accounts for the highly
specific and voluble character of the research topics. For example, in 1999
the Institute initiated major new criminological research projects on piracy
and intellectual property, illegal migration, securities fraud, and the drug
trade. The purpose of this research is often to produce draft legislation or
recommendations for police operations. For example, A.N. Zhuzha (head
of the department of criminology) and N.S. Khruppa, two experts on drug
crimes, are responsible for formulating the National Antinarcotics
Program for 2001 to 2005. Another group of scholars is charged with
carrying out a project to produce recommendations on death penalty
legislation. Despite this pressure to produce highly specific and
immediately applicable criminological knowledge, much fundamental
research is still conducted. For example, A.G. Kulik and V.I. Bobyr, two
experts on crime statistics and patterns of criminality, have begun
innovative studies of latent crime (including victimological surveys) as
well as a study of the causes of "professional deformation" in the police
force. Another scholar at the research institute, A.V. Glushkov, who also
works for the Coordinating Committee on the Fight Against Corruption
and Organized Crime, has developed sophisticated conceptual apparatuses
for studying organized crime.[7]

In Kharkiv, the University of Internal Affairs is administered by A.M.
Bandurka, a prominent deputy (member of Parliament), who is also vice
president of the Ukrainian Association of Criminologists.[8] The
university is fairly young, having graduated only 5 classes of jurists (about
10,000 students), most of whom have joined the ranks of detectives and
investigators in MVD. Already, however, the university has developed a
laboratory of criminology research, which is well funded and well
equipped for advanced applied research. The computer facilities in
particular are impressive. The laboratory draws on faculty from many
different departments of the university for its research and is committed to
interdisciplinary approaches to the topics it studies. A.N. Yarmish, the first
vice rector of the university, supervises all academic research, and
Vladimir Sobolev, the chair of the department of social psychology, one of
only a handful of scholars in Ukraine with the degree of doctor of
sociological sciences, plays a central role in most projects.

The laboratory in Kharkov currently has five main topics of research: 

o Latent crime, studied primarily through surveys and a cooperative and
experimental program with the city government to set up a municipal
police force.[9] 

o Corruption, racketeering, and extortion, which it hypothesizes as a
continuum of criminality. 

o The drug trade and narcotics use, especially among juveniles.[10] 

o The systematization of crime data and police performance indicators.

o The subculture and behavior of organized criminal groups.

Only for this last topic do researchers propose to use the methods of
ethnography and anthropology.[11] On the whole, the laboratory has
expressed a preference for extensive and expensive research tools and
methodologies, such as surveys.

Outside the world of the police stand three academies under whose
auspices serious criminological research is conducted. The oldest, and now
weakest, is the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAS), which is
home to the Department for Pro-blems of Strengthening Legality and
Fighting Crime of the Institute of State and Law, which, until recently,
was headed by the late A.A. Svetlov. In this department are one veteran
criminologist (A.N. Kostenko, a doctor of legal sciences) and two junior
criminologists. The principal research interests of these scholars are
juvenile crime, criminal psychology, and crimes by officials (corruption).
But since funding for basic research has diminished considerably in the
past 5 years and the analytic disposition of these scholars is formal and
legal, rather than empirical or sociological, few of their publications are
rich in descriptions or data. Their preferred method is a legal case study--
deducing the causes of the commission of a certain kind of crime by
analyzing a batch of criminal cases that have passed through the courts.

The second academy of importance is the National Legal Academy
(NLA). NLA, formerly the Kharkiv Institute of Law, is the premier center
for teaching law to civilians in Ukraine. It employs Ukraine's most
well-known legal scholars (including V.M. Groshevoi, the doyen of
Ukrainian criminal procedure). V.Ia. Tatsii, the president (rector), plays a
prominent role in Ukrainian legal politics and is often included ex officio
in many governmental and quasi-governmental bodies (such as the Higher
Council of Judges). Because of NLA's focus on instruction, however, most
of its faculty are better versed in theory and pedagogy than applied
criminology or the administration of justice. Of course, there are
exceptions, and many of the best researchers (such as V.I. Borisov, A.G.
Kalman, and A.F. Zelenetskii) combine appointments at the NLA with
slightly better paying work at a research institute of the Academy of Legal
Sciences (ALS).

The President of Ukraine established ALS as a new academic research
institution in 1994. It also is headed by V.Ia. Tatsii and is reportedly one
of only four state-funded academies (the other three are the Academies of
Agrarian, Medical, and Pedagogical Sciences). The academy's principal
function is to coordinate the scientific research of Ukraine's best legal
scholars and institutes. It has established two subsidiary bodies--the Kyiv
Regional Center (which houses the Department of Legal Information and
is the prospective site of an Internet studio project) and the Research
Institute for the Study of Problems of Crime, located in Kharkiv. Created
in 1995 and headed by V.I. Borisov, a professor from NLA who also
works for the U.S.-funded Kharkiv Center for the Study of Organized
Crime, this institute has a large staff (67 researchers) but limited funding.
There are no computers or researchers with experience in statistical
software programs or regression analyses in the Sector for the Study of
Crime, headed by A.G. Kalman. Nevertheless, it has produced some
valuable studies of corruption and economic crime, its major research
focus since 1997.[12] The Sector for Judicial Reform, equally challenged
by a paucity of resources, has also generated valuable reports and
commentaries on draft legislation of court organization.

In addition to these institutions in Kyiv and Kharkiv, criminological
research projects are under way in police academies at Donetsk,
Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporozhe, Lugansk, Lviv, and Odessa and at law
faculties of universities in Lviv, Odessa, and Kyiv.[13] Most research at
these regional institutions is local, although on occasion scholars are
involved in national projects coordinated by the Academy of Legal
Sciences Kyiv Regional Center. Finally, some criminologists have been
seconded into research units within new Government structures. For
example, V.M. Popovich, author of several works on the shadow economy
and economic criminology, now works in a research institute within the
State Tax Administration.[14] In light of the proliferation of governmental
agencies in Ukraine, it is likely that valuable research and researchers can
be found outside academia and police institutes.

The impressive institutional frameworks for criminology developed in the
past few years have not always brought new or vital content into research.
Even the main research centers in Kyiv and Kharkiv are by and large
starved for funds; many, if not most, of their researchers work part time,
supporting themselves through teaching and other jobs. At the same time,
much of the research underway remains within the framework of Soviet
criminology in terms of topics, theoretical underpinnings, and research
methods. The main subject areas for research published between 1992 and
1998 included crime structure and dynamics, offender personality,
victimology, crime causes and conditions (e.g., alcoholism, urbanization,
migration), crime prevention (especially in police work), organized crime
and corruption, economic crime, narcotics and crime, juvenile crime, and
violent crime. In most of these subject areas, publications included three or
four short articles and one or two dissertations; only seven research
monographs and four textbooks were published. The research plans
through 2000 include a few new topics, including studies of latent crime,
the history of Ukrainian penal institutions, and computer crime, but the
bulk of Ukrainian criminology promises to continue along tried and true
paths.[15]

Criminology in Ukraine would benefit from an infusion of new ideas,
theoretical approaches, research methods, and, above all, the development
of middle-range theory and a working relationship between theory and
research. One way to advance this agenda is to bring Ukrainian scholars,
especially of the younger generation, to Western countries for prolonged
periods of study, including research participation.[16] Another way to help
Ukrainian criminologists overcome the many decades of isolation from
Western criminology is to organize joint Ukraine-U.S. research projects in
Ukraine. Participants in such projects should recognize from the outset
that these will be learning experiences for all, and partners from each side
must stand ready both to teach and to receive new ideas.

---------------------------

Notes 

1. On Soviet criminology in the 1920s and 1930s, see Solomon, Peter H.,
Jr., "Soviet Criminology: its Demise and Rebirth, 1928-1963," in Crime,
Criminology and Public Policy: Essays in Honour of Sir Leon
Radzinowicz, ed. Roger Hood, New York: Free Press, 1975, 571-593. On
criminology in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s, see Danshin, I.N., "Iz istorii
kriminologicheskikh uchrezhdenii v. Ukraininskoi SSR v 20-30-e gody,"
Voprosy borby s prestupnostiu, no. 32 (1980); Danshin, Vvedenie v
kriminologicheskuiu nauku, Kharkov: Pravo, 1998: 56-67; and Ivanov,
L.O. and L.V. Ilina, Puti i sudby otechestvennoi kriminologii, Moscow:
Nauka, 1991: 146-154.

2. See Solomon, "Soviet Criminology," (see note 1); and Solomon, Peter
H., Jr., Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy: Specialists in
Policy-Making, New York: Columbia University Press, 1978, esp. chapter
4.

3. Sakharov, A.B., O lichnosti prestupnika i prichinakh prestupnosti v
SSSR. Moscow: Gosiurizdat, 1961.; Krakhmalnikh, L.G. and I.S. Noi, "O
profilaktike prestuplenii priskhopatov," Sbornik nauchnykh rabot
Saratovskogo otdeleniia NNOSMiK vyp.3 (1961): 260-70; Noi, I.S., et al.,
"O rasshireniia nauchnoi osnovy izucheniia prestupnika," Tezisy dokladov
iz soobshchenii na mezhvuzovskoi konferentsii o teoreticheskim i
metodologicheskim problemam pravovoi nauki Kishinev: 1965;
Kudriavtsev, V.N. Prichinnaia sviaz v kriminologii, Moscow:
Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1968; and Dubinin, N.P., I.I. Karpets, and V.N.
Kudriavtsev, Genetika, podevedenie, otvetstvennost, Moscow: Politizdat,
1982.

4. See Solomon, Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy, 136-44 (see
note 2).

5. Iakovlev, A.M., Prestupnost i sotsialnaia psikhologiia, Moscow: 1971.

6. Danshin, Vvedenie, 73-76 (see note 2); Zelinskii, A.F. Kriminologiia:
kurs lektsii, Kharkiv, 1996: 15-16.

7. Despite Glushkov's access to primary materials on organized crime
groups, there is little ethnography in his analyses and published work. 

8. A.M. Bandurka tends to publish highly publicistic works. See for
example, General Militsii sovetuet i preduprezhdaet, Kharkov: 1998.

9. This project began in January 1997 and has yielded several publications
already. A second survey took place in February 1999 and is to be
followed by more detailed interviews with crime victims who did not
report offenses to the police.

10. Work on this topic has already yielded a major report, Narkotiki i
molodezh, written by I.P. Rushchenko.

11. Vladimir Sobolev reports that several of his students are experimenting
with ethnomethodology as a means of studying social groups. One had
successfully entered into a Roma community. For the study of subculture
of organized criminal groups, Sobolev hopes to conduct intensive research
inside prisons.

12. See, for example, the final reports published in volume 2 of its journal,
Pitanniia borot'bi zi zlochinnistiu, Kharkov: 1998.

13. "Ukrainskaia kriminologiia: tsentry, kadry, napravleniia issledovanii,
publikatsii, plany do 2000g." Unpublished report, 1999.

14. See, for example, Popovich, V.M., Tin'ova ekonomika iak
ekonomichnoi kriminologii, Kyiv: 1998.

15. "Obzor sostoianiia razrabotki kriminologicheskikh problem i
podkhodov k izucheniiu i analizu prestunosti v nauchnoi literature i
pravookhranitelnoi praktiki v 1992-1998 gg." Unpublished report 1999;
"Bibliografiia rabot ukrainskikh kriminologov, opublikovannykh v
1992-1998 gg." Unpublished report 1999; "Ukrainskaia kriminologiia"
(see note 13).

16. Professor Louise Shelley of American University has taken admirable
initiative in bringing Ukrainian criminologists to Washington, D.C., for
extended stays.