According to a scholarly article cited here,

there were between 2 million and 2.5 million people in Soviet prisons

and camps every year between 1938 and 1953. The current population

in US jails plus prisons also exceeds 2 million (Bureau

of Justice Statistics). This comparison has not escaped people’s

notice, as a Google search of "Gulag" and "prison population"

will reveal.

Of course, there are differences between prisons in the US and in

Stalin’s Soviet Union. First, the vast majority of incarcerated people

in America have committed crimes, and they have received due process,

albeit flawed in some cases. Second, conditions in US prisons are

better than conditions in Siberian work camps. Third, our incarceration

rate is lower as a percentage of our population, although it may be

higher in some inner-city neighborhoods today than it was in the USSR

circa 1950. Fourth, the modern rationale for mass incarceration (reducing

crime) is better than Stalin’s reason (terrorizing people into submission

to him personally). Above all, the Soviet terror involved mass killing

as well as imprisonment.

Nevertheless, at the very least, the incarceration of 2 million Americans—with

collateral damage to their victims, and to their families and communities—represents

a social failure that’s unique in today’s world and comparable to

the disasters under Stalin.

CIRCLE has received more

than 250 letters of inquiry responding to our three Requests for Proposals,

which all had deadlines of last Friday. Today, reading letters, not

blogging, is my clear civic duty.

I spoke this morning at the 50th anniversary of the National

Conference on Citizenship. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) spoke

later, as did John Bridgeland, Executive Director of USA Freedom Corps

and advisor to President Bush. After Mr. Bridgeland spoke, someone

in the audience rose to say that he had just seen a car blatantly

stolen outside the hotel, and no one (except himself) had done anything

to try to stop it. His implication: We need to teach young people

good values, just like in the good old days. The standard politician

would take the bait and say that morals have declined, it’s a terrible

thing, but this administration is committed to character education.

John Bridgeland, however, is a thoughtful and sophisticated

guy, and he immediately recalled the game-theoretical explanation

of cases like this. For each person who witnesses the crime, the worst

outcome is that no one does anything to stop it. But the second-worst

outcome for each person is that he or she is the one who intervenes.

Chart the situation on a game-theorist’s grid, and you’ll see that

no one is likely to do anything. Mr. Bridgeland revealed that he was

thinking about game theory when he called the situation outside the

hotel a "chicken game." I found it appealing that he gave

an answer that was interesting, probably true, and that didn’t score

him any political points. (By the way, chicken games offer the most

useful advice ever generated by game theory. If you need immediate

assistance, don’t shout "help," to a crowd. Pick an individual

arbitrarily and say, "You, please help me.")

It’s Labor Day; the clerical and technical workers of Yale

are on strike; and I’m remembering Yale’s labor negotiations

in 1988. The two sides were working around the clock to finish a contract.

I was president of the student government, and the union asked me

and a bunch of other neutral representatives to observe—to make

sure that both sides were bargaining in good faith. Since the University

opposed the idea of observers, I sat on the union’s side of the room.

I was personally sympathetic to that side and have since written

favorably about organized labor; but I was carefully neutral as

a student leader. I think that the University’s negotiators deliberately

ignored me (not that I minded).

I remember that at about 2 am, the two sides took a long break. I

went home for a nap and asked a union guy to call me when they were

ready to start again. He called several hours later, and I asked to

be excused because I was too sleepy to get back out of bed. I’m embarrassed

that he made the call for no purpose.

Both sides complained about the cost of labor lawyers and their billing

practices. I also remember the union identifying slackness and idleness

in certain specific departments on campus that were staffed by their

own members. They blamed management for poor oversight, but their

motive was to save Yale money—so that the University wouldn’t

"outsource" union jobs as another way to reduce costs. This

is an example of collective-bargaining serving both sides.

I’m not sure why Yale has a uniquely bad strike record.

Part of the reason may be that the Yale unions are extremely well

run, strategic, motivated, and deeply supported by the community.

Even though they are in a position to demand higher-than-average wages,

Yale resists paying much above the mean. The bargaining power of Yale

employees is unusual, for only 13 percent of private-sector workers

are unionized, and some of those face such intense competition from

non-union shops that they have to make concessions constantly. In

my view, the Yale locals are right to exploit their unusual power

(which they created themselves, and which other workers should also

enjoy). Yale should face reality and pay considerably higher-than-average

wages.

I was supposed to go to New York City today for a meeting at the Social

Science Research Council, but I found when I reached the airport at

6 am that no flights were leaving because of the huge blackout.

According to the New

York Times, the 1965 power failure "was largely characterized

by cooperation and good cheer," whereas the one in 1977 was "defined

by widespread looting and arson."

In 2003, we seem to be back to civility. Jeff

Greenfield of CNN says he "saw tourists pouring off those double-decker

buses looking dazed and confused. People were offering them free glasses

of water and restaurants were putting out food that was spoiled for

free. I saw police officers politely asking New Yorkers, ‘Would you

mind please getting out of the street.’"

When I was deputy director of the National

Commission on Civic Renewal, I developed an Index

of National Civic Health. INCH, as we called it, declined sharply

in the early 1970s and then rebounded in the 1990s. I have to

wonder whether the three great NYC blackouts are evidence of the same

trend. Three scattered events do not really make a trend. Besides, I

have no specific data for New York City, and no INCH data at all for

2000-3. Still, it’s interesting that New York has fared so much better

in emergencies when the national civic health is higher. More than 1,037

fires burned while the lights were out in 1977. In 1965, and again in

2003, people took care of each other instead.

(Incidentally, we couldn’t run INCH back through the 1960s, because

we didn’t have enough data from those early years. But if you make an

index out of the variables that we do have, then INCH declines throughout

the sixties. That means that it was much higher in 1965 than in 1977.)