Establishment of District Departments of Care Committees For Prisons in the Dnieper Region of Ukraine During the First Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

This article explores the formation of a network of district departments of Care Committees in the Dnieper region of Ukraine. It provides a comparative analysis of the specific activities of the Committees and their departments, their status, and reorganization during the first half of the 19^th century. It is clarified that initially, the Committees were established in provincial cities or their equivalents, such as Odessa, and later, departments were opened in district towns and townships. The process of opening these departments was quite lengthy and not always successful. It is shown that during the 1830s and 1840s, most of the Committees and their departments were opened in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Zhytomyr, Poltava, Simferopol, and their respective departments. It is proven that these departments often served the purpose of simply detaining detainees or acting as transfer points. Their functioning was directly dependent on central funding and charitable contributions.