Social rehabilitation of minor criminals

Social rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents plays an important role in maintaining public safety. It requires special care and respect for the child’s unformed personality. This article summarizes the experience of the Russian system of rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. It is emphasized that the system is closed and standardized, which limits the possibilities of applying new technologies in working with deviant and delinquent children. The goal of this study was to develop optimal social technologies combining classical and innovative methods of rehabilitating juvenile offenders and taking into account the specifics of closed institutions. The main research question was: what new theoretical developments are effective in the rigid and inflexible conditions of these closed institutions? Will they give steady positive results or does space itself block them? The pedagogical experiment conducted by our research team is a unique attempt to go beyond traditional forms. It has a classical scheme consisting of three successive stages: diagnostic, organizational, and evaluation. Novelty is determined by the development and implementation of innovative technology to involve juvenile offenders in voluntary activities in the following areas: environmental (development of environmental awareness, planting trees and plants, caring for homeless animals, etc.), civil and patriotic (design of exhibitions based on the results of search operations, care behind memorials, the organization of festive concerts in for veterans), cultural and leisure (holding concerts, theatrical performances, holidays for socially-unprotected categories of citizens). Volunteering promotes the restoration of broken social bonds through self-awareness as a useful member of society. The use of methods based on cognitive activity, creativity and creativity of children, the active involvement of parents in the rehabilitation process, has achieved impressive results in learning, interpersonal interaction, and most importantly – in self-awareness and self-presentation of children, which society has traditionally become accustomed to writing off.