Analysis: North Ossetia Struggles With Crime Wave, Police Corruption

Statistical data shows a marked increase in crime in North Ossetia since 2006. But even though overall figures are lower than for the Russian Federation as a whole, two thirds of respondents in a recent survey conducted in Vladikavkaz said they do not feel protected by police, while only one in five said they do, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported on April 15. In addition, over 50 percent of the 250 respondents linked their sense of vulnerability to crime to police corruption.

In February 2007, North Ossetian Prosecutor-General German Shtadler said a total of 7,909 crimes were committed in the republic the previous year, a 12 percent increase over 2005, according to kavkaz.memo.ru on February 14, 2007.

Eight months later, North Ossetian Interior Minister Lieutenant-General Sergei Arenin said the incidence of crime for the period January-September was 9.1 percent higher than in 2006, although the number of murders dropped by 36 percent.

The republican parliament held a debate on the crime situation in May 2007 that ended with the passage of a resolution criticizing the work of the Interior Ministry and singling out police corruption as the gravest problem, ITAR-TASS reported on May 31. An Interior Ministry meeting on April 10 registered a 57 percent increase in violations of police discipline among mid-level personnel during the first three months of 2008 compared with the same period last year, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported on April 11.