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THE INDIAN EAIPIRE
[CHAP.
Mutiny prisoners, and was opened to general convicts in 1863.
In 1902-3 the daily average convict population amounted to
12.182 men and 740 women. Under existing rules male
convicts sentenced to transportation for life, or for a term of
years of which six have still to run, are transported to the
Andamans provided that they are medically fit. Females are
transported if sentenced to transportation for seven years or
upwards. The convicts are dispatched to Port Blair in batches
during the calm season of the year. Under a scheme which
has been sanctioned by the Government of India there will,
hereafter, be five stages in the life of a male transported
convict. The first six months will be passed in a cellular jail,
the next eighteen months in association in a jail similar to
those of the Indian mainland, and the following three years as
a convict of the third class kept to hard gang-labour by day
and confined in barracks by night. Having thus completed
five years, a convict may be promoted to the second class, in
which he is eligible for various posts in the barracks and jails,
and for employment in the convict police or other Government
service, or in the capacity of servant to a private resident.
After five more years so spent, a well-behaved convict enters
the first class, in which he labours under more favourable
conditions, or is granted a ticket entitling him to support
himself, with the grant of a plot of land on which to build a
house. He may now send for his family or marry a female
convict. The three later stages of this discipline have been in
force for many years, but the two earlier have not yet been
introduced in a complete form as the accommodation is not
ready. The main portion of the cellular jail has been com-
pleted, and is already occupied, but the building of the
associated jail for the second stage has not yet been begun.
Females are kept at intra-mural work under strict jail
discipline for three years, for the next two years they are
subjected to a lighter discipline, and at the end of five years
they may support themselves or marry a male convict. Pro-
motion from class to class is dependent on good conduct, and
bad behaviour may lead to degradation. The convicts are
employed in jail service: in the erection and repair of jail
buildings; in the commissariat, medical, marine, and forest
departments; in tea-gardens, and at other agricultural work;
and in various jail manufactures. At the end of 1902-3 there
were 1,817 convicts in the semi-free or self-supporting stage
out of a total of I2,724 in the settlement. For breaches of
discipline and other jail offences convicts are punished by
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