Thief in law
A thief in law (or thief with code, Russian: вор в зако́не, romanized: vor v zakone) in the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet states, and their respective diasporas is a formal and special status of "criminal authority", a professional criminal who follows certain criminal traditions and enjoys an elite position among other members within organized crime and correctional facility environments and who has informal authority over lower-status members. The phrase "thief in law" is a calque of the Russian slang phrase vor v zakone, literally translated as 'thief in [a position of] the law'.