Cuba/Re: why the left is so hopeless in AmeriKKKa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 12:48 PM -0400 7/13/02, Chris Doss wrote:
>Cannot one like Sam Farber, in New Politics, say that Cuban life
>expectancy and other social indicators co-exist with a
>stagnant/repressive polity and suppression of civil society? New
>Politics is a leftist journal, no? ;-)
>
>I have yet to see anyone here argue that Cuba is not a repressive 
>state. The argument is that it is impossible (or very, very 
>difficult) for it to be otherwise.

According to Max Weber, "a state is a human community that 
(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical 
force within a given territory" (@ 
<http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/xWeb.htm>).  By that definition, to 
speak of "a repressive state" is a tautology.

The question is how to measure degrees of repression.  The 
incarceration rate, I believe, is one of the important indices of 
repression.

*****   World Prison Brief

Highest Prison Population Rates

This table lists the 50 countries with the highest prison population 
rates, as known to ICPS at February 2002. The prison population rate 
is measured per 100,000 of the national population.

1. U.S.A.                    690
2. Russian Federation        670
3. Cayman Islands (U.K.)     600
4. Belarus                   554
5. Virgin Islands (U.S.)     551
6. Kazakhstan                522
7. Turkmenistan            c.489
8. Bahamas                   478
9. Belize                    459
10. Bermuda                  447
11. Suriname                 437
12. Ukraine                  436
13. Kyrgyzstan               426
14. Dominica                 420
15. Maldive Islands          414
(sentenced prisoners only)
16. South Africa             403
17. Guam (U.S.)              402
18. Botswana                 396
19. Puerto Rico (U.S.)       372
20. Latvia                   367
21. Netherlands Antilles     364

     (Neth.)
22. Singapore                359
23. Grenada                  352
24. Trinidad and Tobago      351
25. Thailand                 342
26. St Kitts and Nevis       338
27. Estonia                  337
28. Azerbaijan               323
29. Barbados                 317
30. Lithuania                303
31. Panama                   303
32. Cuba                   c.297
33. Moldova                  287
34. Antigua and Barbuda      278
35. St Vincent and
the Grenadines               270

<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/highest_prison_population_rates.html> 
*****

*****   Prison Brief for Cuba

Country: CUBA
Ministry responsible: Ministry of the Interior
Prison population total (including pre-trial detainees / remand 
prisoners): c.33,000
at 1997 (Nils Christie, University of Oslo)
Prison population rate (per 100,000 of national population): c.297
based on an estimated national population of
11.1million at mid-1997 (United Nations)

<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/caribbean_records.php?code=5> 
******

Cuba is among nations with relatively high incarceration rates (see 
the first excerpt above), but it doesn't look so bad compared with 
the US, Russia, etc.

It appears that Japan is still a land of the free, with a relatively 
low incarceration rate of 48/100,000 (2002), 
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/continental_asia_records.php?code=12>, 
despite more-than-a-decade-long economic woes.  ;->

As far as prison populations go, small is beautiful.
-- 
Yoshie

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