L'assistance sociale à la délinquance juvénile dans la Russie soviétique des années 20

Abstract

Dorena Caroli. The social treatment of juvenile delinquency in Soviet Russia during the 1920s. This article studies the decriminalization of juvenile delinquency in Soviet Russia during the 1920s. Contrary to most European countries which treated juvenile delinquency within the framework of the judiciary, after the revolution, Soviet Russia initiated an administrative handling of child homelessness and juvenile delinquency carried out through social care services. The author was able to retrace the evolution of the commissions in charge of minors' affairs throughout the 1920s from legal sources, archive documents and the concrete cases appended to this article. These administrative commissions' role was to implement the Bolshevik state's medical and pedagogical measures, thereby depriving the judiciary of this function. One can make out three distinct stages in social policy regarding child homelessness and juvenile delinquency during the 1920s. The first, which corresponds to War Communism, was characterized by a centralized administrative modus operandi. After NEP, this changed into a joint administrative and judiciary operation. During the third and last stage, which corresponds to the collectivization and forced industrialization era, the commissions were bereft of real function, contenting themselves with divulging communist pedagogical information.