| Abstract: | This article studies the decline of a long‐standing mafia known as thieves‐in‐law in the post‐Soviet republic of Georgia. In 2005 an anti‐mafia campaign began which employed laws directly targeting the thieves‐in‐law. Within a year, all Georgia's thieves‐in‐law were in prison or had fled the country. This article looks at the success of the policy by investigating how Georgia's volatile socio‐economic environment in the 1990s affected the resilience of the thieves‐in‐law to state attack. The article presents data showing that the chaos of this period impacted on the ability of thieves‐in‐law to coordinate activities, regulate recruitment, and protect their main collective resource—their elite criminal status. Due to this, the reputation of the thieves‐in‐law as a mafia drastically declined creating vulnerability. The article adds to the literature on resilience in criminal networks and the study of organized crime in the post‐Soviet space. |
