Between Convictions and Reconciliations: Processing Criminal Cases in Kazakhstani Courts

The criminal justice system in Kazakhstan is full of contradictions: Soviet-era accusatorial bias in pre-trial detention and sentencing goes hand in hand with the pro-defendant bias in closing criminal cases. This paradoxical co-existence of seemingly contradictory biases fits well within the informal power map of the criminal justice system. The major reform—reducing prison population to decrease recidivism and minimize international shaming—was coupled with the more recent drives for closing cases on the basis of reconciliation, the total registration of crimes, and zero tolerance approach to combating crime have been achieved only through the change of the incentive structure in the criminal justice system. The post-Soviet innovation of closing criminal cases of public prosecution based on the reconciliation with the victim of crime has proliferated in Kazakhstan because this matched both the incentives of the key actors in the criminal justice system and demands from private actors who are involved in criminal proceedings. In contrast, other types of public participation, such as jury trials, which implement the right to a fair trial, give teeth to adversarial proceedings, and cultivate judicial independence—requirements of the Constitution of Kazakhstan—have rarely been used because they disrupt existing power relationships within the law-enforcement system.