In Russian and French Prisons | Page 7

employed in useful work in
Siberia, than to spend his life in picking oakum, or in climbing the
steps of a wheel; and--to compare two evils--it is more humane to
employ the assassin as a labourer in a gold-mine and, after a few years,

make a free settler of him, than quietly to turn him over to a hangman.
In Russia, however, principles are always ruined in application. And if
we consider the Russian prisons and penal settlements, not as they
ought to be according to the law, but as they are in reality, we can do
no less than recognize, with all efficient Russian explorers of our
prisons, that they are an outrage on humanity.
One of the best results of the Liberal movement of 1859--1862 was the
judicial reform. The old law-courts, in which the procedure was in
writing, and which were real sinks of corruption and bribery, were done
away with. Trial by jury, which was an institution of old Russia, but
had disappeared under the Tsars of Moscow, was reintroduced.
Peasant-courts, to judge small offences and disputes in villages
according to the unwritten customary law, had already been established
by the Emancipation Act of 1861. The new law of Judicial Procedure,
promulgated in 1864 introduced the institution of justices of peace,
elected in Russia, but nominated by Government in the Lithuanian
provinces and in Poland. They had to dispose of smaller criminal
offences, and of all civil disputes about matters not exceeding 30£. in
value. Appeal against their decisions could be made to the District
Gathering of Justices of the Peace, and eventually to the Senate.
All cases implying a privation of civil rights were placed under the
jurisdiction of Courts of Justice, sitting with open doors, and supported
by a jury. Their decisions could be carried to Courts of Appeal, and
cases decided by verdicts of jurors couId be brought before Courts of
Cassation. The preliminary investigation, however, still remained
private, that is (in conformity with the French system, as opposed to the
English), no counsel was admitted to the prisoner during the
preliminary examination; but provisions were made to guarantee the
independence of the examining magistrates. Such were, in a few words,
the leading features of the new organization of justice under the law of
1864. As to its general spirit it is only fair to say that--apart from the
preliminary inquiry--it was conceived in accordance with the most
Liberal ideas now current in the judicial world of Europe.
Two years after the promulgation of this law, the most shameful feature

of the old Russian penal code--punishment by the knut and
branding-iron--was abolished. It was high time. Public opinion was
revolted by the use of these relics of a barbarous past, and it was so
powerful at that time that governors of provinces refused to confirm
sentences that enjoined the use of the knut; while others--as I have
known in Siberia--would intimate to the executioner that unless he
merely cracked the terrible instrument of torture in the air, barely
touching his victim (an art well known and very profitable to
executioners), "his own skin should be torn to pieces." Corporal
punishment was thus abolished, but not completely. It remained in the
villages (the peasnnt-courts being still empowered to administer
flogging), in the army, and in the convict-prisons. Only women could
no longer be submitted to flogging as long as not deprived of their civil
rights.
But, like all other reforms of that period, the benefits of these two great
changes were to a great extent paralyzed by subsequent modifications,
or by leaving them uncomplete. The old penal code, containing a scale
of punishments in flagrant disagreement with the state of prisons, was
still maintained. Twenty years have elapsed since a thorough revision
of the code was promised; committee has succeeded committee; last
year again tile newspapers reported that tile revision of the code had
been terminated, that tile sentences would be shortened, and that the
barbarous provisions introduced in 1845 would be abolished. But the
code remains still what it was when it issued from tile hands of
Nicholas I.'s committees; and we may still read in tile revised edition of
1857, S 799 that convicts can be punished by five to six thousand
strokes of the whip, and by being riveted to a wheel-barrow for terms
varying from one to three years.
As to the judicial reform, it had hardly become law ere it was ruined by
ministerial circulars. First of all, years passed and in thirty-nine
provinces out of seventy-two the old courts were maintained and
progress in any suit, as well as the fina1 decision, could be obtained
only by vzyatki, that is, by bribery. Until 1885, the old system remained
in operation over the whole of Siberia. And when the law of