Research project P4S/251/PenAnt (Research action P4S)
Penitentiary anthropology was introduced in Belgian prisons shortly after the First World War. It shifted the emphasis from the existing system of ‘moral accounting’ and its moralising approach to scientific observations, medical diagnosis and classification aimed at the individual treatment of the convicted person and at their reintegration into society. New types of professional actors such as medical anthropologists and social workers conducted research on imprisoned persons and their environment, aimed at their classification, treatment and rehabilitation. Their findings were kept in moral and anthropological case files.
The project seeks to advance the accessibility and valorisation of both the moral and the anthropological files of the Belgian prison system from the interwar period. It concerns on the one hand the 123,000 moral files of all men and women sentenced to a minimum three-month prison term in Belgium between 1924 and 1952, and on the other hand the 36.000 preserved anthropological files that were created in the anthropological laboratories from 1920 onwards. After the prisoner's release, both files were centralised at the Central Anthropological Laboratory in Brussels, where they were made accessible by name through an index card system.
This project aims to provide digital access to the moral and anthropological records. To this end, all index cards will be digitised. Using crowdsourcing, the relevant data will be entered into a database based on the scanned index cards. The database will ultimately be integrated into Agatha, the State Archives' search engine.
In addition to digital access, the project focuses on the valorisation and academic use of the interwar-era files. An online guide will be produced, containing source lists, search guides and research strategies designed to bring the moral and anthropological files to the attention of both researchers and the general public, and to promote and facilitate their use.
Together with project partners Kaat Wils (KU Leuven) and An-Sofie Vanhouche (VUB), extensive interdisciplinary (historical and criminological) research will be conducted on the files. This will focus primarily on the role of (female) social workers who entered the Belgian prison system from 1930 onwards and their dealings with minority groups. Furthermore, research will be initiated on the anthropological files, which internationally stood as a paragon of a concrete application of positivist criminology. More specifically, the evolving relation between bio-medical and psychological research on the imprisoned persons will be examined.
