“The Penitentiary Vice for Children is Inhumanity”: Problems of Penitentiary Policy Towards Minors in the Ideological and Political Heritage of N. M. Yadrintsev

This work is devoted to the reconstruction of the socio-political views of the leader of the movement of Siberian regionalists – N.M. Yadrintsev. In the diverse ideological and political heritage of the Siberian intellectual, the problem of penitentiary policy in relation to minors is concretized. In general, based on a political and textual analysis, the publication attempts to show that the regionalist thinker considered the penitentiary policy in a completely modern way, that is, as an important component of the internal social policy of the domestic state. The authors also found that in his political journalism, the Siberian democratic regionalist did not bypass the problems of legal regulation and state policy in relation to juvenile delinquents. The publication shows that when raising the question of the validity of some laws in this area, N. M. Yadrintsev concluded that the successes and achievements of the social policy of any state are directly due to the establishment of the procedure and conditions for the policy of execution of punishment on the basis of morality and philanthropy, especially in relation to children. The authors emphasize that the principle of true humanism was generally characteristic of the political thought of the founders of regionalism. Guided by the principle of humanism and referring to the value of the social nature of man, N.M. Yadrintsev discovered numerous gaps in the penitentiary policy for juveniles in the Russian Empire.