criminal offences to serve short periods in prisons or common gaols, such as exist in each district of the empire.
(3) Political prisoners, who have committed purely political offences, and who are compelled to reside in certain districts under police supervision.
The first class of prisoner is confined to special convict prisons which are under the same regulation and management now as the majority of convict prisons of most European countries. Nearly all the convict prisons in Siberia are in the Far East, at such places as Nerchinsk, on the Amoor River, and on the island of Saghalien. These convicts are forced to do hard labour, but very few of them are now used in mines, because the Government now has practically no mining properties which it works itself in Siberia. Convicts have recently been used as navvies for the construction of the Amoor railway. Thus criminal convicts are no longer seen in Siberia, except in the eastern territories, and, moreover, the number sent from European Russia is much less than it formerly was, for Siberia is no longer looked upon as a convict settlement.
The second class of common prisoner is the same in Siberia as in any other part of the empire. I deal with him in Chapter IV., in describing my visit to a local gaol in Minusinsk.
Perhaps the most important class of prisoner, and one in which the greatest interest is taken by public opinion in Western Europe, is that of the political exile, of which there are two kinds.
There are, first, those sentenced by a court of law under proper legal procedure, and, secondly, those sentenced without trial by "administrative order"
