La voix des saints ? La nouvelle image de la rééducation des jeunes "délinquants". Analyse des journaux et des écrits des établissements d'éducation surveillée en France et au Québec de 1945 à 1970

From the mid-forties, in France and Quebec, governments adopted a new legislation in favour of the protection and the education of children in “moral and physical danger”, judged as “maladjusted” or sentenced as “delinquents”. These laws, more than a break point into “irregular children” conceptions and practices, illustrate the political, economical, cultural and social changes which affected western societies after World War II. The public and private institutions in charge of the education and rehabilitation of minors under justice were not left aside by all these mutations. Responsible of boys and girls sentenced by justice since the middle of the 19th century, the “workhouses” and “reformatories” were deeply put in question during the interwar years, a period of time when the children’s rights were proclaimed and awareness campaigns denounced the living conditions of the young people in “children jails”. The States revised their legislation while institutions were reformed to be adapted to the new regulations which were more protectionist and educational for the youth. During this movement of social intervention in favour of the “irregular youth”, several voices expressed themselves about education for “irregular children” with the help of magazines. Some educational institutions published their own magazines to explain and promote their re- educational policies. In France and Quebec, two important institutions, well-known among the reformatories for delinquent minors since 1873, published a magazine from 1945. These two institutions were : Saint-Maurice public institution of supervised education, in Loir-et-Cher department, and Mont-Saint-Antoine Brothers of Charity private school, in Montreal. Saint-Maurice, an institution reformed since 1938, published Espère, a monthly magazine of “the boys of Saint-Maurice”, from 1945 to 1970. The young “delinquents” described their lives among the groups, their apprenticeships, and their leisure and sport practices. They also told the events which monthly took place in the institution. Therefore the youngsters could express themselves. The Brothers of Charity also published a magazine at the Mont-Saint- Antoine, Le petit courrier then le courrier du Mont-Saint-Antoine, where they presented their school, the life of young “Catholic boys” among groups and workshops, the events and the support they got. The clergymen gave their opinion on the delinquency and re-education with a reference to their long experience with the “unfortunate childhood”. The magazines were the official expression of the two institutions: the first one focused on the young boys whereas the second one underlined its skill and efficiency. In both cases, the magazines drew a new portrait of supervised education schools. The aim of this work is to demonstrate in what ways the institutional magazines demonstrated the investment of their institutions into a new way for re-education, with a compared study of the sources from Saint-Maurice and the Mont-Saint-Antoine, from 1945 to 1970.

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