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Visualizations of “Hooligans”. A Bulgarian Film of the 1960s
According to Bulgarian penal law at the time (the Law from 1896 and the
following laws and codex), there were special rules excluding children and minors
from criminal responsibility. But the minimum age changed over time—from 10
years in the first Bulgarian criminal law of 1896 (Art. 42) to 12 years in 1943 in
Zakon za sadilishta sa malovrastni (‘Law for Courts for Underage’). The communist
regime raised the minimum age for criminal responsibility to 14 years (Nakazatelen
zakon (‘Criminal Codex’] of 1951); youth age 14 to 18 years were excused from
criminal responsibility if they lacked the capacity to form the mens rea of an of¬
fense. Differentiation within two categories, minors (maloletni), age 8 to 14 years,
and adolescents (nepalnoletni), age 14 and 18, was preserved also in the passage in
1958 of Zakon za borba sreshtu detskata prestapnost (Art. 10).'7
The legislative framework reveals many issues. In the period before World War
H, the efforts of the Bulgarian Child Protection Union (founded 1924) aimed to
put all children at risk, including children with “criminal predispositions”, in the
full glare of publicity, to evoke wide social sympathy for children’s life, to unite the
efforts of the institutions, on which the improvement of children’s living conditions
depended (Popova 1999). This became radically changed with communist legisla¬
tion. The law for combating juvenile delinquency from 1958 defined the LES as a
place for serving sentences and as an “institution for compulsory education” (zave¬
denie za prinuditelno vazpitanie) wich the aim “to prevent various forms of crime,
violations of legal order and deviations from proper development and education of
minors (maloletnite i nepalnoletnite)” (Art. 1). This quite unclear definition did not
list the acts that might be considered deviant, potentially including everything that
someone might consider improper or immoral. The state established a continuous
chain of quasi juridical institutions that totally encompassed childhood: specialized
commissions, pedagogical rooms for children, LES, homes for temporary accom¬
modation, penitentiary houses. Measures of surveillance over minors were expand¬
ed, executed by a semivisible network including the educational institution'®, the
Narodna militsia (‘People’s Militia—police), the juridical institution, the prison
institution, and mass organizations as the Otechestven Front (‘Fatherland Fronv),
and the Dimitrovski komunisticheski mladezhki sayus (Dimitrov Communist Youth
League, Komsomol’).
The LES were created as disciplinary total and closed institutions (Goffman
1961; Foucault 1975) according to a uniform model. The schools were gendered
(non-coed) and hierarchically structured—power was centralized in the hands of
the director. A stated rationale for labor educational schools was that they provided
for hooligans a means of reeducation to enable them to become good members of
7 Tn 1961 the Law was renamed in Zakon za borba sreshtu protovoobshtestvenite proyavi na maloletnite
i nepalnoletnite (‘Law for Combating the Antisocial Acts of Minors and Adolescents’).
15 The LES were under the authority of the Ministry of Education, the administration of the schools was
assigned to the Department of National Education—“Special Schools”.
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