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About Gavin Slade

Gavin Slade is a post-doctoral fellow at the Freie Universitat in Berlin. He was formerly assistant professor of criminology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of a new book on organised crime in Georgia, Reorganizing Crime: Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia (Oxford University Press, 2013). His other work includes "The Threat of the Thief: Who Has Normative Influence in Georgian Society?" (Global Crime, 8/2, May 2007) and "Georgia's war on crime: creating security in a post-revolutionary environment" (European Security, 21/1, March 2012)

Articles by Gavin Slade

This week's editor

Adam Ramsay is Editor of oD-UK.

European integration

Six countries. Six different paths to EU integration.

No to TTIP

The secretive EU-US trade deal explained

The failed "mental revolution": Georgia, crime and criminal justice

Gavin Slade and Alexander Kupatadze 1 October 2014

Crime has been near the top of Georgia's political agenda for a decade. But successive governments have still to address fundamental questions of legitimacy and trust.

Georgia and migration: a policy trap

Gavin Slade 23 December 2013

Europe's politics of migration control are being exported to Georgia with potentially dangerous results, says Gavin Slade.

Georgia: politics of punishment

Gavin Slade 30 September 2012

Behind Georgia's prison-abuse scandal lies a large-scale, self-funding penal system whose effects - not least psychological - pervade the society, says Gavin Slade.

Georgia's prisons: roots of scandal

Gavin Slade 24 September 2012

The exposure of violent abuse in the Georgian prison system has shocked its people and rocked the government of Mikheil Saakashvili. The intense focus on zero-tolerance and mass incarceration in the criminal-justice system is a key to understanding why it happened, says Gavin Slade.

Russia: crisis, crime, and police reform

Gavin Slade 25 November 2010

The economic recession in Russia has not produced the expected rise in organised crime. The answer to this conundrum lies in the politics of security reform, says Gavin Slade.

Georgia’s mafia: the politics of survival

Gavin Slade 20 August 2010

A prominent feature of Georgian life both before and after the Soviet period has been the influence of a powerful criminal network, the “thieves-in-law”. Its rise and endurance is closely linked to the changing character of the Georgian state, says Gavin Slade.