The initiative was launched in spring 2024 by the territorial departments of the Anti-Corruption Agency (Сыбайлас жемқорлыққа қарсы іс-қимыл ұлттық агенттігі, hereinafter, the Agency) with the aim to prevent corruption crimes and foster the culture of non-tolerance of corruption and high ethical principles among officials. So far, 2,510 servants have attended the visits to correctional institutions and pre-trial detention centres.

The measures are applicable to such categories of officials as:

• Heads of public bodies, in particular, ministries, agencies and committees;
• Heads of local executive bodies (Akims) and their deputies;
• Heads of directorates and units of regional executive bodies (akimats) of various levels.

Daniyar Bigaydarov, spokesperson of the Agency, says that the attendees are led through the entire route - from the offices of investigators to prison cells and locations for prisoners’ outdoor exercises. Officials are also invited to attend court hearings of corruption cases.

The Agency stresses that the visits are held on a regular basis, but the question of their mandatory nature remains open. It is further highlighted that this practice is undertaken to demonstrate the consequences of breaching the law rather than to intimidate.

Kazakhstan is not the first country to use this kind of “showcasing the future of a corrupt official” to prevent corruption.

In Belarus, for example, the Prosecutor-General’s Office initiated the visits of public officials and heads of subordinate enterprises to detention facilities and prisons in 2010, bringing them to investigation rooms, cramped cells, solitary confinements and walking yards.

A similar initiative was implemented in the Chinese town of Shiyan in the province of Hubei at the suggestion of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in 2015: roughly 70 party functionaries, executives and their spouses were guided through cells and were given the opportunity to talk to prisoners.

Contacts between officials and prisoners convicted of corruption crimes took place in India too: 576 officials were sent to see the prisons of Farrukhabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017.