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Video recordings of torture as well as humiliating and abusive treatment of prisoners by prison staff were leaked into the public sphere and to the NGO community in Georgia directly before the change of government on October 1, 2012. The use of abuse and coercion has allegedly been one of the bases for order and governance in the Georgian penitentiary system in recent years under the government of Mikheil Saakashvili. Establishing when this began, and just how widespread, systematized and intense the use of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment was, is the purpose of the present study. With a new government in power since then, more videos have been found and shown to selected members of civil society. The alleged number of such recordings suggests widespread torture. The exact purpose of the torturous acts depicted and why these were recorded in the first place, are further questions that this study seeks to address.
Following this preface, the first chapter introduces Georgia and the Soviet legacies of the prison system; the second chapter gives an in depth analysis of government criminal justice and prison policy and its relationship to human rights abuses in the period 2003-2012. The third chapter shows what the reports of civil society and international actors between 2006-2012 already revealed about the problems of torture in the criminal justice system in Georgia. Chapter four then works with completely new empirical survey data of prisoners and former prisoners carried out by Open Society Georgia Foundation and its partner organizations. Chapter five provides recommendations. While providing some details, this report does not focus on the changes to the prison system post-2012 under the new government. This is a separate matter for investigation.
