Monthly Archives: January 2026

‘Spending my youth between four walls’: experiences of time in Belgian reform schools, 1900–1960 by Laura Nys

In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thousands of minors with troublesome behaviour were sent to reform schools. Often, they spent months or even years inside the walls of disciplinary institutions. Did their young age influence how minors experienced their confinement, compared to adult detainees? This blog post discusses the different meanings of time for juvenile delinquents, using case files from Belgian state reform schools between 1900 and 1960. Continue reading