The Penal System

Mongolia maintained both prison camps and correctional or educational colonies in the 1980s. There also were detention camps for minor offenders, designed to rehabilitate them by "socially useful labor." Such labor included town-improvement projects: cleaning the street, and repairing buildings. Those performing this labor received neither wages nor food; they purchased their food or depended on their families to provide it. Local jails existed for brief detentions (twenty-four hours or less) of intoxicated persons and those awaiting indictment.