3 ms·
US prisons/jails: 2,266,800 adults in 2010 Stalin gulags: 1,727,970 people in 1953 (I am no expert on the Gulag system. Whatever the case is, it's uncontrover
by calibraxis 15y ago
US prisons/jails: 2,266,800 adults in 2010
Stalin gulags: 1,727,970 people in 1953
(I am no expert on the Gulag system. Whatever the case is, it's uncontroversial that the US is the world's leading jailer of its own populace.)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Brief_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Brief_history)
- yummyfajitas 15y ago1.7m in Gulag / 108m in Russia = 1.6% incarceration rate Pop # taken from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia 2.3m in prison / 312m in USA = 0.74% incarceration rate in the US
- ssp 15y agoThe Soviet Union had a population of 189 million people in 1953 according to Wolfram Alpha.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoFor an incarceration rate of 0.9%. This also assumes the Soviet Union sent everyone to the Gulag, and had no local jails, etc. I don't know if this is actually true, can anyone comment?
- arethuza 15y agoI believe that during the height of the Gulag, local jails were mainly used as interrogation and storage facilities for people who would eventually end up in the camps. Certainly the camps held both those convicted of political and criminal offences. I can recommend both Anne Applebaum's excellent "Gulag - A History" and, of course, Solzhenitsyn's incredible "Gulag Archipelago": http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag-a-history/ http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag-a-history/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago