The purpose was to provide as complete an overview as possible of the pre-trial detention facilities, district prisons, and correctional facilities – including public, public-private, church-run, and privately owned institutions – in use at the time for the judicial or administrative detention of adults and juveniles. The catalogue of facilities was intended to serve as a reference work for federal and cantonal authorities, as well as for private individuals. A revised edition of the index was prepared in 1965 at the request of the Conference of Cantonal Judiciary and Police Directors.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The source provides insight into the geographical, religious and institutional diversity of the correctional facility system in Switzerland. What types of facilities were in operation? How big were they? Who were the individuals held there in administrative detention? On what grounds, and by whose order? With the help of the index, it is possible to provide detailed answers to these questions for the survey year 1954. By comparing it with the revised version from 1965 and with other similar sources, the index prepared by Schwarz can be used to trace the evolution of the institutions that served for administrative detention in Switzerland over a period of decades.

Use of sources

To begin, the list of facilities must be digitized in tabular form. Once that is done it is possible to categorize the facilities in different ways for research purposes and to analyse the results according to various criteria. The third step involves mapping the geographic location of the individual facilities, which opens up a new set of questions with regard to regional cost-sharing and cooperation arrangements (inter-cantonal cooperation).

E. Guggisberg, M. Dal Molin/Translation

Source

Schwarz, Martin: Verzeichnis der Anstalten in der Schweiz des Straf- und Massnahmenvollzugs und der Untersuchungsgefangenschaft, Basel 1954.