{"id":4294,"date":"2003-09-25T11:28:17","date_gmt":"2003-09-25T11:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2003-09-25T11:28:17","modified_gmt":"2003-09-25T11:28:17","slug":"imprisonment-in-the-ussr-and-the-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4294","title":{"rendered":"imprisonment in the USSR and the USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a scholarly article cited here<\/a>,<\/p>\n

there were between 2 million and 2.5 million people in Soviet prisons<\/p>\n

and camps every year between 1938 and 1953. The current population<\/p>\n

in US jails plus prisons also exceeds 2 million (Bureau<\/p>\n

of Justice Statistics<\/a>). This comparison has not escaped people’s<\/p>\n

notice, as a Google search of "Gulag" and "prison population"<\/p>\n

will reveal. <\/p>\n

Of course, there are differences between prisons in the US and in<\/p>\n

Stalin’s Soviet Union. First, the vast majority of incarcerated people<\/p>\n

in America have committed crimes, and they have received due process,<\/p>\n

albeit flawed in some cases. Second, conditions in US prisons are<\/p>\n

better than conditions in Siberian work camps. Third, our incarceration<\/p>\n

rate is lower as a percentage of our population, although it may be<\/p>\n

higher in some inner-city neighborhoods today than it was in the USSR<\/p>\n

circa 1950. Fourth, the modern rationale for mass incarceration (reducing<\/p>\n

crime) is better than Stalin’s reason (terrorizing people into submission<\/p>\n

to him personally). Above all, the Soviet terror involved mass killing<\/p>\n

as well as imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, at the very least, the incarceration of 2 million Americans—with<\/p>\n

collateral damage to their victims, and to their families and communities—represents<\/p>\n

a social failure that’s unique in today’s world and comparable to<\/p>\n

the disasters under Stalin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}