THE ROLE OF MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IN THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND PENITANTIARY STATISTICS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE (1802-1864)


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Abstract

The article analyzes the experience of the Ministry of justice on the systematic collection of statistical data on its main business lines (the administration of the court system, the investigators apparatus, and the rule-making activity), including the activity reflecting the state of crime in the Russian Empire in the early 19th century. These data were the important source on the history of crime in pre-revolutionary Russia, and the so-called moral and criminal statistics; they expressed numerically the activity of justice institutions and the state of crime in the Empire and had the substantial significance for the surveillance of the Ministry of justice over the activity of the gubernial anti-crime judicial authorities in order to determine its prevalence and to take the appropriate actions. The Ministry of justice identified and implemented the system of statistical study of a range of issues, which were subsequently included in the range of penitentiary statistics problems - the number of people remained in custody, the number of prison population, and the penitentiary regime characteristics. It is important that the Ministry of justice and the scientific community start to recognize not only the significance of statistics as the form of reporting of judicial institutions of the Russian Empire about their activities, but also its importance in the selection of means of crime prevention. Besides their practical significance the report indicators served as one of the most important sources for the study of crime in the Empire. Along other sources the report indicators of the Ministry of justice of the Russian Empire were the base for a series of research works on criminal statistics at that time, that summarizing and studying the official materials, came to certain conclusions about the causes of crime and the measures of crime prevention.

About the authors

Oksana Nikolaevna Yakovleva

Scientific Research Institute of Federal Penal Service, Moscow

Author for correspondence.
Email: yakoksana.1977@mail.ru

candidate of legal sciences, Associate Professor, research staff member

Russian Federation

References

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