Correctional colony for juvenile delinquents in Nizhny Novgorod province (1878–1917): unknown pages of history

Abstract

The article is devoted to the unknown pages of the history of the correctional colony for juvenile delinquents in the Nizhny Novgorod province in the late XIX — early XX centuries. The chronological framework of the study is determined by November 26, 1878 — the date of the colony’s foundation — March 2, 1917 — the time of the collapse of the penitentiary system of the Russian Empire during the February bourgeois Revolution. Unpublished office documents from the fund 394 “Committee of the Society of the Nizhny Novgorod Agricultural Correctional Colony for Juvenile Delinquents, Nizhny Novgorod” of the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region were used. The most important normative legal act is the “Charter of the Society of the Nizhny Novgorod Agricultural Colony for juvenile delinquents”, adopted in 1878 and defined the goals of the colony. Among the published clerical documents, we should highlight the Report on the Main Prison Administration for 1882, which gives an idea of the place of the Nizhny Novgorod agricultural correctional colony among penitentiary institutions for juvenile delinquents in Russia at the end of the XIX century. From the pre–revolutionary periodical press, we analyzed the journal “Prison Bulletin” — the publication of the Main Prison Administration. The “Prison Bulletin” raised questions about the organization of Russian correctional institutions for juvenile prisoners. The problem of studying the functioning of the Nizhny Novgorod correctional agricultural colony was addressed by domestic researchers Yu. G. Galai [1], S. Yu. Varentsov [2], L. Yu. Varentsova [3]. The novelty of this article is determined by the introduction of new historical sources into scientific circulation. The author came to the conclusion that the methods of re-education of juvenile delinquents and homeless children were teaching sciences, crafts, cultivation of the land, introduction to work, the formation of religious and moral values. Family education was introduced. The experience of the agricultural penal colony in the Nizhny Novgorod province was widely promoted not only in the Russian Empire, but also at the international level.