Punishment in the Serbian Krajina: a Contribution to Research on the History and Political Power and Punishment on Croatian Territory 1991 – 1995

Abstract

Starting from the political science definition of penal policy as the administering of punishment on subjects related to political power and the organization of the state order, this work seeks to provide a contribution to the reconstruction of organized violence and punishment linked to the apparatus of coercion and crimes on the territory of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, a political order established by rebel Serbs in Croatia in the period between 1991 and 1995. The work has two primary functions, historiographical and that of political science. In addition to the analysis of the regulatory and institutional frameworks that were supposed to govern the criminal justice system, this paper empirically reconstructs the work of formal and informal institutions of the Krajina’s penal policy and its “rhythm of crime” on the basis of published sources. The obtained discursive data is interpreted in terms of political theory in order to reconstruct a picture of the relationship between political order and punishment in the observed space and time. Instead of controlling violence and implementing rational punishment, the political order, by its instability and production of political violence, further undermined the loyalty of the population subjected to it.