versing with me about the prison which he controlled, and I thereupon took advantage of his communicative nature to obtain some useful information.
"I took the post," he said, "because I wanted a job, but it is a thankless office and unpleasant to be always an agent of punishment. It is not my nature to be thus, but I took the post because when I left the army I had to do something." I asked him if the common gaols in Siberia were overcrowded. "No," he said; "I have 200 at present in Minusinsk and room for 300, but they are continually going and coming."
On further inquiries I ascertained from him that each of the six towns in the Yenisei Government had a town prison, and that there were sixty-seven volost or district prisons in the rural districts. They were entirely kept for the punishment of small offences, which came under the jurisdiction of the "Mirobny Sud," or local stipendiary justices of the peace. Convicts, however, are never sent to these prisons.
I was afterwards able, by studying the statistical publication for the Yenisei Government, to ascertain the number of convictions and imprisonments in certain years and thereby to form some idea of the state of public morality in Central Siberia. I found that in 1909 there were 7896 convictions for indictable offences—i.e. one per cent. of the population. Of these ·3 per cent. were punishable by imprisonment and the rest by fines. The principal offence was theft, which accounted for forty per cent. of the total convictions. Most of the remainder consisted of offences against Government regulations. Threatening and intimidation formed about twelve per cent, of the convictions, and there were 160 convictions for
