Law, Crime and the Criminal Justice System’s Transformation in Post-Soviet Lithuania: Some Trends and Functioning

Abstract

The aim of the research is to identify, what changes, trends and tendencies are visible in defining crime, and rethinking and reforming criminal law and the criminal justice system in post-Soviet Lithuania. The chronological limits are the first decade of Lithuania’s independence. Lithuania is contextualised in the post-Soviet region, thus mapping and tracking the transition of its post-Soviet criminal prosecution system. In this region, after the collapse of the USSR, the tension was constantly growing between: a) the declared dream of the democratic transition; and b) the growing rate and visibility of crime. Lithuania, as a part of these processes, used local law talents and Western legal aid to speed up the process of reestablishing the rule of law. But although successful in some respects ( for instance, in dealing with the most visible and threatening forms of organised crime), the country did not make enough progress in others ( for instance, the adoption of the new criminal and criminal prosecution code took a long time, as did the Western-oriented reform of the criminal prosecution process).