Punitiveness in the global east: Convict settler colonialism and attitudes to punishment in Kazakhstan

This article examines public attitudes towards punishment in Kazakhstan through a Global East lens. Drawing on focus group data from settlements historically shaped by Soviet penal colonies, the study finds that punitiveness in Kazakhstan is structured by the memory and material legacy of Soviet convict-settler colonialism. In contrast to findings from the Global North and South, fear of crime and hostility towards ethnicised or racialised ‘others’ do not drive preferences for harsh punishment in the data. Instead, respondents primarily expressed a desire for offenders and penal institutions to fulfil economic functions that had been embedded in the Soviet penal philosophy of ‘internal colonisation’. Penal colonies were intended to build towns, develop local economies, and form the basis of identities in communities that were striving ultimately to bring about global revolution. Respondents’ preference for prison thus represented a desire for a return to this penal productivism. The article argues that these findings require expanding conventional definitions of punitiveness to account for the distinctive penal political economy of the Global East.