> From: "Chris Doss" <itschris13 at hotmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 06:47:05 -0400
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Gulag query
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>
> I just read that during the worst years of Stalin only 2.5% of the Soviet
> population was in prison. This CAN'T be true, can it?
>
According to Nils Christie, it is. There is a section in 'Crime Control as Industry' where he describes the process by which he arrived at his figure: he would give a number, and his soviet-era counterparts would raise an eyebrow if it was wrong. By the time he got to the a figure that wouldn't raise their eyebrows, his own were standing on end. (I lent the book out so I don't have it at hand right now.)
But then again, the US prison population is creeping towards 1%, and the number of people under some form of penal control - ie. people in probation and so on - is well over 2,5%. I think it is 4%. In the African-American population the figures are far worse than during the great Russian incarceration. If you count loosing your civil rights as a form of penal sanction, there are places in the states where 30% of the male African-American population is under such sanction.
I thought one of the most incisive observations Christie made was that during the soviet gulag mania, being sent to a gulag ended up being a sort of rite of passage, and incarcerated poets were regarded as heroes. A whole gulag culture emerged. He notes that a similar thing is going on in the states, vis a vis hip hop and so on. He thinks that the Soviet prisoners had an advantage in having political prisoners amongst their ranks; I await to see what will happen as fundie islamists are added to the brew in US. In Britain, I am told, jail is ground zero of radical Islam; apparently it is spreading rapidly in the Aboriginal population in Australia's jail (who are over-represented more than American blacks, or though it is almost unbelievable, blacks in apartheid SA.) The later might be white paranoia, though - I had a look for serious research on the subject last year and there was none.
Thiago