Our zona: the impact of decarceration and prison closure on local communities in Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

How does the closure of prisons impact local communities where the prison is sited? The paper compares three prison closures in northern and central Kazakhstan through field observations, interviews, and focus groups at the sites. We find that respondents unanimously opposed closure by appealing to the apparent good performance of the prison. Beyond the economic loss incurred by closure, respondents reported a loss of communal identity, as well as prestige connected to the presence of the military at the colony. The paper analyzes these responses by examining the logics by which the prisons came to be opened in the Soviet period as well as investigating how the relationship between punishment, economy, and society in Kazakhstan has changed since that time.

KEYWORDS:

• Decarceration
• prison
• Kazakhstan
• identity
• community
• militarization

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Laura Piacentini and Aisana Serikbayeva for their help with thinking through the data. The data collection was made possible through the work of the Public Opinion Research Institute in Astana. We are grateful to Botagoz Rakisheva, Ainur Mazhitova, Gulden Ashkenova, and Assel Aizhanova. Many thanks to Kairbolat Yergaliev and Mukhtar Farkhaduly for help in the field. Thanks also to Galina Frenkel for logistical support. We originally worked on this paper as part of a collaborative project of the Central Asia Research Cluster. We have benefited from thorough edits and constructive feedback from Eva Rogaar, Joe Lenkart and Katherine Ashcraft as well as an anonymous reviewer for the Cluster. We are very grateful for these inputs which have helped to shape the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All references to Karaganda Oblast refer to the oblast prior to its division into two territorial administrative divisions in 2022.

2. Interview with former deputy chairman of the prison service and former head of the prison service for East Kazakhstan Oblast, Ust-Kamenogorsk (Oskemen), 24 October 2020.

3. Interview with former governor of ES 164/4, 19 June 2020.

4. Interview with former governor of ES 164/4, 19 June 2020.

5. Interview with Kushmurun historian and activist Yuri Katelevich, Kushmurun, 17 October 2020.

6. FG indicates focus group, the number indicates which focus group the respondent belonged to; the first names of respondents are pseudonyms throughout.

Additional information

Funding

This paper presents findings from the project In the Gulag’s Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former Soviet Union, funded by The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom. Grant reference: ES/R005192/1.