Law enforcement in Kazakhstan is handled by the Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

 police and law courts, largely unchanged from the era of Soviet control, and is shared between the country's National Security Committee

National Security Committee

The National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan is an intelligence agency in Kazakhstan. It was founded on 13 July 1992.-History:...

, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Office of the Procurator General.

Organisation

The police force itself comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, whereas the National Security Committee and the Procurator General's office are responsibly for intelligence gathering and investigation respectively. From 1992 Kazakhstan became a member of INTERPOL

Interpol

Interpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...

. Its law enforcement agencies are closely tied with those of Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

, Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

, Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, and Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...

.

The court system in Kazakhstan operates at three levels, local, province, and supreme court

Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan is the highest of three levels of courts of Kazakhstan, sitting above regional appeals courts, and city or district courts...

, and operates under a system of guaranteed legal representation (similar to that of the United States of America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

). Together with these courts, and approval by the Procurator General's office, the Kazakhstan police are permitted to use invasive electronic surveillance, an act that has often been accused of being a violation of human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

, particularly by the United States.

Human rights allegations

The website of the US Embassy in Kazakhstan notes that in 2004-2005 the Kazakhstan government's human-rights record "remained poor," and "the Government continued to commit numerous abuses." Observer group Freedom House

Freedom House

Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...

 ranks this former Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 state with a 6 in Political Rights and a 5 in Civil Liberties (scale of 1-7; 1 is the highest), denoting it as "Not Free." Political expression was reported to be restricted in Kazakhstan in the months leading up to presidential elections in December, according to observers, including Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

 and Freedom House

Freedom House

Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...

.

The CIA world fact book cites that out of 76,000 prisoners interred in Kazakhstan prisons, 1,300 died of tuberculosis in 1995, and the prisons themselves suffer from overcrowding and staff shortages. Government funding for the prison system is also seen to be inadequate.

Crime rates

Kazakhstan has suffered from growing crime rates in recent years, and the police force is viewed as being understaffed and inefficient, with a rate of 50 crimes per 10,000 population being cited, most commonly violent crime

Violent crime

A violent crime or crime of violence is a crime in which the offender uses or threatens to use violent force upon the victim. This entails both crimes in which the violent act is the objective, such as murder, as well as crimes in which violence is the means to an end, such as robbery. Violent...

 and narcotics, (cannabis

Cannabis

Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...

 and opium

Opium

Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

in particular, it is estimated that there are 1,380 km² of cannabis plantation). The police are also reportedly understaffed, in some cases by as much as 2000 officers.