Book 2 Chapter 30 The Astonishing Institution Called Criminal Law

The third part of his business was to help the convicts, who
applied more and more often to him. At first when he came in
contact with the prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he
at once began interceding for them, hoping to lighten their fate,
but he soon had so many applications that he felt the
impossibility of attending to all of them, and that naturally led
him to take up another piece of work, which at last roused his
interest even more than the three first. This new part of his
business was finding an answer to the following questions: What
was this astonishing institution called criminal law, of which
the results were that in the prison, with some of the inmates of
which he had lately become acquainted, and in all those other
places of confinement, from the Peter and Paul Fortress in
Petersburg to the island of Sakhalin, hundreds and thousands of
victims were pining? What did this strange criminal law exist
for? How had it originated?

From his personal relations with the prisoners, from notes by
some of those in confinement, and by questioning the advocate and
the prison priest, Nekhludoff came to the conclusion that the
convicts, the so-called criminals, could be divided into five
classes. The first were quite innocent people, condemned by
judicial blunder. Such were the Menshoffs, supposed to be
incendiaries, Maslova, and others. There were not many of these;
according to the priest's words, only seven per cent., but their
condition excited particular interest.

To the second class belong persons condemned for actions done
under peculiar circumstances, i.e., in a fit of passion, jealousy,
or drunkenness, circumstances under which those who judged them
would surely have committed the same actions.