Постоянен надзор и инфранаказателност: българското наказателно право през периода 1957–1969 година
Constant Surveillance and Infra-Penality: Bulgarian Criminal Law, 1957–1969

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents a sociological analysis of several key elements that characterize the specific historical profile of Bulgarian criminal law under classical socialism: the specific economy of penal repression; the case of ‘dangerous recidivism’ and the figure of the recidivist; the educative measures of surveillance over minors; the infra-penal practice of comrades’ courts; the execution of punishment in socialist prison. The main thesis: the classical socialism managed to create an educative infra-penalty of the infraction which is a logical continuation of the social impact of law only at first glance. This infra-penal system puts under control a space which is partly or sporadically, but never fully, covered by the laws, in which many actions that elude the penal power are qualified and sanctioned. Moreover, the socialist society has established a continuous chain of quasi-juridical institutions which totally encompass childhood by ‘codifying’ the anti-social actions of minors. And while the one pole of the penal intervention is occupied by recidivist crime, it is infant crime that stands on the other pole, in the point of penal education. But the social link between them is constructed: a strict continuum is established between infant and recidivist crime, which starts with educative influence on the infraction and ends with the penal sanction of the crime. It links into a semi-visible network the police institution, the judicial institution and the prison institution, with all forms and methods of control whose target are the anti-social actions of minors and which are the historical originality of classical socialism: specialized commissions, pedagogical rooms for children, schools of labor and education, boarding-schools, homes for temporary accommodation, penitentiary houses.

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