NCJ Number
81278
Date Published
1980
Length
16 pages
Annotation
Communist countries in Eastern Europe are formulating crime control and prevention policies in the face of rising criminality, despite ideological contentions that crime is a waning relic of capitalism.
Abstract
Research trends and criminological approaches were inhibited well into the 1960's by the Marxist doctrine that socialism itself would prevent crime. In reality, urbanization and industrialization are generating a growing crime problem, as evidenced by a variety of recent official responses. Crime is being recognized in Soviet literature; some authors have even acknowledged as criminogenic the disarray and inequity of socialist economics and other aspects of the system. Poland was the first to produce crime analyses and statistics before the 1960's. Russian institutions for crime study, control, and prevention emerged, requiring citizen participation in juvenile diversion programs, volunteer crime watches, and settlement of petty crimes. Copied in other East bloc countries, these imposed attempts have little community support and are strongly colored by punitive rather than rehabilitative approaches, especially with regard to juveniles. Despite official attempts at public education, citizen knowledge of the law is minimal and their interest dampened by awareness that their human rights are subject to arbitrary interpretation by party functionaries. Some crimes, especially black marketeering, are admittedly beyond law enforcement control. The general trend in dealing with juvenile delinquency and new crime forms such as traffic and environmental offenses is toward more repressive penalties. That rehabilitation is unlikely in East European correctional institutions is evidenced by striking increases in recidivism, the response to which is punitive incarceration without rehabilitative pretexts. Criminal justice policies in the Soviet bloc countries remain repressive because rehabilitation approaches would require recognition of crime causes within the social system itself. Tables and 57 footnotes are supplied.