Fordon Penitentiary from the yeas 1920-1939 as scourses the probems prison managment the Second Republik od Poland

Abstract

This article presents the group files Fordon Penitentiary from the years 1920-1939, kept in the State Archive in Bydgoszcz. This archival group includes files of 692 female and male criminals, who served here their custodial sentence in 20 – year inter – war period, The archive in Bydgoszcz took over the files on April 29, 1962. This is not a complete group. According to estimates, 50% of the entire group has been preserved. The are no administrative files of the prison at all. Some personal files are illegible, others are continuation of earlier ones sent to prison in Fordon from other prisons along with the moved prisoners. Personal files of prisoners in the group Fordon Penitentiary are arranged in alphabetical order of surnames and inventoried.
In the years 1920-1939, in the Fordon prisons there were women sentenced for political crimes among female criminals, as well as a dozen or so male prisoners. From the former, only the file of Fordon prisoners has been preserved. Other files concern criminal prisoners. The preserved files of Fordon include, among others, personal data along with profile, warrants of admission to prison, copies of sentence, data on prisoners’ behavior, list of disciplinary penalties, if applicable, and record cards from other prisons, where the convicted had stayed. These cards show that the decisive majority of Fordon prisoners were moved there to serve last part of their sentence. In the preserved files of prisoners, one can see, among others, the following
crimes: murder, infanticide, document forgery, putting forged money into circulation, theft, fencing, fraud, burglary, arson, abortion, procuration, and spying. The greatest number of preserved files concerns female prisoners who committed theft, fencing and fraud. These are 172 convicted women. Second are murderers – 142, third infanticides – 66, fourth women who did abortions – 24, and the women sentenced for document forgery and putting forged money into circulation – 23. Other types of crimes committed by women appear sporadically in the preserved files. The preserved files include only two female prisoners
sentenced for spying and two for their activity in the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalist. The preserved files of female criminals from the Penitentiary group haven’t been used for scientific purposes so fair. However, the number of the preserved
documents is sufficient to examine them in the scope of women’s crime, crime pathology, and social conditions, i. e. the female prisoner’s backgrounds. The above – named group can also be used for research connected with the history of the Polish prisons system in the 20 – year inter – war period.