[lbo-talk] Angela-a-Day

[Somebody Somebody]

The abolitionist stance towards prisons is just another of a long list of "transitional" demands that the left makes that somehow never seem to find application in really existing socialist states. Cuba has somewhere between 30,000 and 55,000 prisoners, for a population of about 11.5 million people - not a low rate of incarceration at all. The Soviet Union also had a high incarceration rate - even after Gorbachev's legal reforms, the U.S.S.R. had 353 prisoners per 100,000 people in 1989. 

Like the ecosocialist demand for a zero growth economy, the abolition of prisons is an extreme policy that no socialist state has ever exhibited serious interest in. Socialist countries are typically intent upon the exact opposite - high growth rates, rapid industrial development, high levels of labor discipline, and social order.