The purpose of this work involves a systematic reconstruction of the sociological views of the leader of the movement of Siberian regionalists - N. M. Yadrintsev on the problem of the regime of detention and mechanisms for the correction of juvenile delinquents. The relevance of the study is dictated by scientific, academic and practical tasks. Firstly, this fragment of the enlightenment’s ideological heritage has not yet received adequate coverage in literature. Therefore, the results of our work can contribute to the development of the subject area of the history of sociological thought in Russia. Secondly, the study can be useful in developing the doctrinal foundations of modern state penitentiary policy. The work is based on the methodology of the “new social history” and the provisions of the “new intellectual history”, which allows us to consider social phenomena through the prism of the individual, and not the state. Textual analysis of N. M. Yadrintsev’s works on the stated topic was also widely used. In the course of the study, it was established that the Siberian thinker advocated the separation of juvenile prisoners from adult inmates and the establishment of a special regime of detention for this category of forced prisoners. The article notes that when considering the problem of keeping juvenile criminals in isolation from society, the Siberian regionalist recorded the consistent humanization of the criminal punishment itself for children. The authors also show that in the matter of re-education of juvenile convicts, the publicist proposed the speedy introduction of educational supervision for the purpose of moral influence on child criminals. In general, it is concluded that N. M. Yadrintsev developed a rational method of correction, which should be based on examples from social life that give concepts about the mutual connection of people.