A court in Dagestan has sentenced a local resident to 11 years in prison for holding a senior position in the criminal hierarchy.
The press service of the courts of general jurisdiction in the Republic of Dagestan, located in Russia's North Caucasus region, told Lenta.ru that the man systematically broke rules while serving time in a penal colony to build his standing in the underworld.
Judges found that the defendant attended a criminal gathering with a vor v zakone, or thief in law, in December 2020. During that meeting, he was formally granted the status of polozhenets, designating him as an authorized representative of elite crime bosses.
In Russian organized crime subculture, a thief in law occupies the top tier of the criminal underworld, while a polozhenets functions as a designated regional or institutional deputy. Russia introduced legislation making it a criminal offense to hold a senior position in a criminal hierarchy, targeting underworld leaders regardless of specific underlying predicate crimes.
Operations inside the penal colony
After receiving his designation, the convict took charge of organizational and personnel matters inside the correctional facility. Court records showed that he appointed smotryashchiye, or prison overseers, to maintain order under underworld rules, resolved conflicts among prisoners, and recruited incoming inmates into the criminal group.
He was also responsible for managing the prison's obshchak, a centralized mutual assistance fund financed through contributions from inmates. Officials stated that his leadership activities posed a direct threat to public safety and order on the grounds of the penal institution.
Similar underworld prosecutions
The sentence is part of a broader crackdown by Russian authorities against high-ranking underworld figures. Previously, a court in Tver Oblast, a region in western Russia, convicted another crime authority for holding a top position in the criminal hierarchy, seizing both US dollars and euros from him during the proceedings.
