Crime in the Soviet Union was separated into "ordinary crime" and "political crime."[1] Soviet authorities did not release crime data.[2]
Crime statistics were a state secret in the USSR from the late 1920s to the early 1930s.[1] In the following decades, the Soviet government only released partial information about crime in the USSR.[1] It was only in the 1960s that the Soviet government began to classify and record crime in a systematic manner, but still prevented professional Soviet criminologists from accessing the full data.[1] Perestroika eased some of the access to the crime data.[1]
It was only with the collapse of the Soviet Union that crime data became more widely available.[2] Reconstructions of Soviet crime data after the collapse of the USSR indicate that incarceration rates during Stalin's rule were "extremely high" and that the criminal justice system operated on a presumption of guilt, high rates of capital punishment, criminalization of workplace violations, and the high prevalence of "political crimes."[3]
Corruption was common; in particular, in the form of bribery, primarily due to the paucity of goods and services on the open market.[4]
- ^ a b c d e Butler, W. E. (1992). "CRIME IN THE SOVIET UNION: Early Glimpses of the True Story". The British Journal of Criminology. 32 (2): 144–159. ISSN 0007-0955.
- ^ a b Stickley, Andrew; Mäkinen, Ilkka Henrik (2005). "HOMICIDE IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND SOVIET UNION: Continuity or Change?". The British Journal of Criminology. 45 (5): 647–670. ISSN 0007-0955.
- ^ Belova, Eugenia; Gregory, Paul (2009). "Political Economy of Crime and Punishment under Stalin". Public Choice. 140 (3/4): 463–478. ISSN 0048-5829.
- ^ "Soviet Union: Nonpolitical Crime and Punishment". country-data.com. Retrieved 6 July 2013.
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