Issues of the Use of Prisoner Agricultural Labor in Switzerland in the Late XIX-th - early ХХ-th Centuries (on the Example of the Witzville Colony)
2022
Volsky, Mikhail
In the history of the penal enforcement system, both in Russia and abroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, considerable attention was paid to the use of convict labor. The state paid special attention to this problem, since the participation of prisoners in agricultural work was widely used and brought profit to the treasury. A striking example of the use of convict labor was the foreign experience of the Swiss Witzwil prison, which belongs to the canton of Bern. This is a special open-type institution created for the purpose of agricultural exploitation of those convicted of non-serious crimes. The article is devoted to the study of the use of Swiss experience in the use of convict labor in agriculture in the late XIX - early XX centuries. As the study shows, the agricultural labor of convicts was successfully used for the purposes of re-education and correction, in addition, free work in the open air brought not a small profit. The convicts, however, did not always work voluntarily willingly, and there were escapes from custody. Nevertheless, the presented experience of organizing agricultural work of prisoners in Switzerland may well be extrapolated to domestic penitentiary practice at the present time.
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