When the wall came down, crime went up: Crime and social change in post-socialist east-central Europe from 1985 to 2000

This dissertation describes and explains changes in personal and property crime rates from 1985 to 2000 in nine Central Eastern Europe countries, namely Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. It draws upon comparative criminology, social change, and area studies to develop a framework for understanding the relationship between crime and social change resulting from the fall of Soviet-style socialism and the creation of new political and economic regimes. This study assesses how well traditional criminological theories can explain crime changes in this region and also examines how the post-socialist transformation paths of these countries, namely their democratization and marketization strategies after 1989, shaped crime patterns and trends in these countries. This dissertation consists of secondary analyses of time-series-cross-section data from various official records sources. It utilizes several methods, including a descriptive analysis, quantitative analyses using ordinary least squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors and generalized estimating equations, and an in-depth case study of one Central Eastern European country.