This research project asks why the prison culture in the contemporary Western Balkans – a region of major significance for the European Union – is so resistant to change after over two decades of endeavours on the part of the EU, Council of Europe, and other international actors to reform the Balkan penitentiary establishments in line with the European humanitarian standards. Modernization theory (Max Weber, Emile Durkheim) is unable to explain why political changes in the Western Balkans were not accompanied by the abolition of the repressive penal practices of the totalitarian past. Digging in the archives and utilizing ethnographic methods of observation and interviewing in the Balkans, this empirical-historical research will undertake an attempt to not only solve this theoretical puzzle, but to also help both European and Balkan policy-makers to increase the potential of the Balkan countries' adaptation to the European humanitarian values.

2021

2025