Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/563

547 APPENDIX 547 which, according to the estimates, is to cost more than 250,000 rubles, has been built, and will presently be completed, under the supervision of an architect who does not live where the work is going on, and who pays to it only an occasional visit. A number of etapes, which are in process of erection simultaneously along a distance of more than five hundred versts, are under the superintendence of an architect who has a great quantity of other important work to look after. The results are perfectly in- telligible. The contractors find no difficulty in departing from the plans, estimates, and conditions, and accountability for the work is merely formal and almost wholly fictitious. Apart from this lack of proper supervi- sion, the amount of money appropriated for prison buildings is too small. Etapes, for example, are built of logs, without stone foundations, and, as a result, their long walls soon settle and become crooked, and the whole edifice assumes the appearance of a ruin, which is speeddy made complete by inadequate care, climatic agencies, and injuries done to it by its temporary occupants, the exiles. It is absolutely necessary to increase the number of architects in the country, and to pay them more than the present rates of salary. The extra expense thus incurred will be produc- tive, because it will result in the better construction of Government build- ings, and thus in a very considerable saving in the future. Prisoners are forwarded from place to place in Eastern Siberia " by etape process." Parties under the supervision of a " convoy command " march from etape to etape, and are whole months on the way, while hard- labor convicts, who must go to the head waters of the Amur River, do not reach their destination in less than a year from the time when they enter Eastern Siberia. In the etapes the male prisoners and the families that voluntarily accompany them are kept, as far as possible, in separate kdmeras ; but they spend the greater part of the day together, and the scenes of debauchery to be witnessed here cannot possibly be described. All the shame and all the conscience that a criminal has left are here lost completely. Here go to ruin also the families of the criminals, irrespec- tive of age or sex. In addition to debauchery, the prisoners are guilty of many other offenses and crimes, among which changing of names occu- pies an important place. A hard-labor convict, for example, changes names with a mere exile, and goes into simple banishment instead of pe- nal servitude, while the one who takes his place knows that he can easily make his escape from penal servitude. The subsistence of the prisoners on the road is very expensive to the Government, and yet the exiles are very badly fed. Receiving food-money in the shape of cash in hand, they seldom get anything warm to eat, and feeding them from a common kettle is almost impracticable and is rarely attempted. The exile system is almost completely unorganized. Although the laws have established innumerable rules for its regulation* such rules, for the most part, have been dead letters since the very day of their promulga-