„Offenses of children” and Crimes Against Children in the Judicial Practice of the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century Based on the Materials of the State Archive of Doneckopietrovsky District

Abstract

The article deals with the materials characteristics of the judicial institutions of the last quarter of the 18th century taken from the State Archive of the Dnipropetrovsk Region. Their information capabilities for the disclosure of child crime issues are analyzed. The incidents of crimes against children are also considered. Attention is paid to the difficulties of determining the age of full criminal responsibility in the specified period. Cases on these issues are found mainly in the records of the Ekaterynoslav Conscience Court, the Ekaterynoslav Sovereign District Court, the Novorossiysk Chamber of the Court. Also, certain statistics are provided with an inventory of the lost records in the archive of the period under study. Typical juvenile crimes are thefts, serious bodily harm (including murder) through negligence. There are also offenses in which children were involved by adults: robbery, arson. In relation to children, crimes against them are mostly violent: defilement, sexual and physical abuse. A special kind of crime is the killing of an illegitimate child. The documents show the mediated participation of children in court proceedings: until a certain age they could not be witnesses, did not take part in investigative actions. The analyzed materials provide opportunities to explore new aspects of the social history of southern Ukraine, namely the history of childhood.