looked at. Finally they are examined, and some decision is reached with regard to them. If they require an extraordinary expenditure of money they may have to go to the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Finance, or await the making up of the budget for the next fiscal year. In any event twelve months or more elapse before their fate is finally determined. Somewhere and by somebody objection is almost sure to be made, either to the plans themselves, or to the amount of money that they require, and the documents are returned to us for modification or amendment in accordance with the suggestions of some official who knows little or nothing about our needs and circumstances. Thus, a year or more after the departure for St. Petersburg of our plans and estimates they come back to us for alteration. We alter them in such a way as to meet the views of our superiors and send them to St. Petersburg again. In the meantime the personnel of the prison department has perhaps changed. New officials have taken the places of the old; new ideas with regard to prisons and prison reform have become prevalent; and our modified plans and estimates, which would have satisfied the prison authorities of 1880, are found defective by the prison authorities of 1882. After the lapse of another period of sixteen or eighteen months the papers again come back to us for revision and alteration. And so it goes on, year after year. Plans and estimates for a new prison at the mine of Algachí have been in existence ever since 1880. Meanwhile they have twice been to St. Petersburg and back, and are now there for the third time. What are you going to do about it? Even when the erection of a new prison has been authorized, the work proceeds very slowly. It is now almost ten years since the Government actually began to build a new brick prison at the mine of Górni Zerentúi, and the carpenters have n't even got the roof on, to say nothing about floors."[1]
- ↑ This prison was not finished until 1888—three years later. (Report of the Chief Prison Administration for 1888, p. 99.)
