Het hart van Gabriel B. Jongeren en hun gevoelens in Belgische heropvoedingsinstellingen voor jeugddelinquenten, 1890-1965.

Gabriel’s heart. Youngsters and their emotions in Belgian state reformatories for juvenile delinquents, 1890-1965. The dissertation concerns the role of emotions in state reformatories for juvenile delinquents in Belgium between 1890 and 1965. The dissertation blends two historiographical traditions: historical criminology and the history of emotions. While historical criminology has an extensive tradition of research on juvenile delinquency, it rarely addresses the role of emotions. The history of emotions then has much to offer, while in turn benefitting from historical criminologists’ expertise in voicing socially vulnerable groups. I used four Belgian state reformatories as a case study: the youth prisons of Ghent (boys), and Sint-Andries Bruges (girls) (late nineteenth century) and the State Reformatories of Mol (boys) and Bruges (girls) (twentieth century). Additionally, I studied the Central Observation Institute of Mol (boys). A total of 200 personal case files have been studied, complemented with other institutional archival documents and contemporary publications. My dissertation consists of three parts. The first part focuses on the role of emotions in the Central Observation Institute of Mol. I analyse the intellectual conceptualization of emotion, the use of the pre-printed observation forms and the observation practices. I argue that the observation of emotions attests of a hybrid change in the interwar period, influenced by the neo-scholastic psychology, local penitentiary traditions and psycho-pedagogical practices. The second part studies the role of emotions in the daily interactions between the educators and the youngsters. While in other scholarly work these interactions are generally restricted to forms of institutional violence, I argue that the relationships consist of a much wide array of interpersonal contacts. I demonstrate the existence of a variety of emotional climates among the institutional landscape as manifested in pedagogical views, practices and the corollary of spaces and emotions. The last part focuses on ego-documents of the youngsters. I show how the youngsters negotiated about emotions and their sense of self, how they experienced time and emotions in detainment and lastly I use clandestine correspondence of girls to show how they contested the institutional emotion norms, drawing on practices from their own cultural framework. Overall, this dissertation shows that the prism of emotions allows for a finer conceptualization of the notions discipline, punishment and re-education, at the same time providing a unique insight in the emotional practices of vulnerable groups in society.