Crime and Justice International Magazine - Sam Houston State University

The experiment was a unique event in Polish and European prison history. Firstly, it was a bold and innovative attempt to define the tasks of the prison system vis-a-vis young prisoners, who were particularly depraved. Secondly, it was held towards the end of the 1950s, thirteen years after the end of the World War II, from which Poland emerged ruined and, to all intents and purposes, defeated (the Soviet occupation). Thirdly, it began several years after the end of the Stalinist era. There would be nothing strange about this were it not for the fact that during this period criminal science did not exist in Poland because the communist authorities regarded it as a “bourgeois” science. Lastly, it was a joint initiative by the Ministry of Justice and a group of academics from two universities, in which the latter played the leading role.