Hijos del rigor

Las vicisitudes del primer reformatorio argentino (Buenos Aires, fines del siglo XIX – principios del siglo XX)

Abstract

Among the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century took place two fundamental facts in the minority history. On the one hand, the creation of the first Reformatory itself of state and clerical management: the Asilo de Reforma de Menores Varones (Male Minor Reform Asylum). On the other hand, its transformation into Cárcel de Encausados (Encausados ​Prison) which non-religious management and modern impression come to modify the course that would follow the development of criminal-care circuits characteristic of juvenile justice in our country. This metamorphosis came after a political crisis surrounding the form and method in which they were supposed to "regenerate” incorrigible, neglected and delinquent minors housed in the Asylum.

This work pursues to rebuild the journey of the first Argentinean reformatory. Born from the oligarchic state impulse to face one side of the social matter, the child and juvenile delinquency, the Casa de Corrección de Menores Varones (Male Minor Correction House) had originally a religious management with a strong impact on the organization of the establishment whose premises coincided essentially with those of classical penology. Rapidly, their methods (related to the systematic use of physical punishment) were put in question, which gave way to the secular reformatory era, based on the application of modern principles of positivist penology, which involved the rehearsal of new social control practices, as the classification of individuals according to pathologies and abnormalities and the collection of information and data for statistical and judicial purposes.