Otchet' Posetitel'nago Komiteta Tyuremnago Obshchestva, Ot Dekabrya 20 1819 Do 1921. ("Report Of The Visiting Committee Of The Prison Society, From 20 December 1819 To 1821"). Penology.

First and only edition of this scare report of the first Russian Prison Aid Society, and most likely its inaugural publication, detailing the findings of an investigative committee which was allowed access to detainees in St Petersburg. In the 1810s, the English Quaker missionary Walter Venning visited St Petersburg and met Russian imperial court officials, encouraging them to reform the capital's prisons. Emperor Alexander had a favourable impression of the Quakers based upon his visit to England in 1814, and he responded to Venning's request by signing legislation to form Russia's first Prison Aid Society in 1819. This report is divided into three sections, which detail proposals for the improvement of conditions in the prisons visited by the committee, the current state of the institutions they inspected, and desiderata for the future. The committee paid equal attention to the conditions in which women and men were held, with subchapters of Part II remarking on the female and male sections of the main civil and military prisons in the capital. In the concluding section, the committee emphasises its desire to visit and help improve conditions in the notorious prisons of Siberia. WorldCat locates only nine copies of this work in institutions. Bruce Friend Adams, The Politics of Punishment, Prison Reform in Russia 1863-1917, 2019; Andrew Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822. Octavo (196 x 120 mm). Handsome contemporary green morocco-grain roan, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, gilt quatrefoils in compartments, wide gilt palmette and feather roll panel to boards, board edges gilt-milled at the corners, foliate gilt roll to turn-ins, Vitruvian scroll in blind at edges of blue surface-paper endpapers, all edges gilt, pale grey silk bookmarker. Decorative monogram on title page; text in Russian. Roan with only light rubbing and soiling, joints consolidated, contents foxed: a very good copy, presenting handsomely on the shelf.