Comparisons of resocialization institutions tend to focus on their effectiveness, understood as the effectiveness of the measures taken to prevent the pupils from violating legal and social norms, assuming that these institutions view their mission and goals in the same way. In reality, these institutions define their activities differently, trying to balance their professed values and vision of their work with the sometimes contradictory, expectations of the entire legal and social environment. Assuming that the mission statement is a kind of identity narrative, a story about how the institutions perceive themselves and how they would like to be perceived by the environment, a systematic comparison of the missions of youth education centers was made. For this purpose, an analysis of the 24 educational and preventive programs on the institutions’ websites was carried out. The results show that the centers differ in the number and type of topics included in their mission statements. The dominant ways of perceiving their missions are as, embedded in the directive model of upbringing, an educational
and re-socializing institution, and a care-preventive institution.
