About GULAG
Prison Conditions
A 1957 CIA document entitled “Correctional Labor Camps in the USSR: Transferring Prisoners Out of Camps,” on pages two through six, reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag:
‒ Until 1952 prisoners were given a guaranteed amount of food, plus extra food for exceeding the norms.
‒ From 1952, the Gulag system operated on the basis of “economic calculation,” so that the more prisoners worked, the more they were paid.
‒ For over-fulfillment of standards by 105%, one day of imprisonment counted as two, which reduced the time spent in the Gulag by one day.
‒ Also, when the Soviet government had more funds as a result of post-war socialist reconstruction, it increased the food standards for prisoners.
‒ Before 1954, prisoners worked 10 hours a day, while free laborers worked 8 hours a day. Since 1954, both prisoners and free laborers worked 8 hours a day.
‒ A CIA study of a standard camp sample found that 95% of the prisoners were habitual criminals.
‒ In 1953, 70% of the “common criminals” of the sample camp studied by the CIA were granted amnesty. Within the next 3 months most of them were re-arrested for new crimes.
…
Thus, according to the CIA, approximately two million people were sent to the Gulag in the 1930s, while according to declassified Soviet archives it was 2,369,220 up to 1954. When compared to the population of the Soviet Union at the time, as well as statistics In a country like the United States, the percentage of the Gulag population in the USSR throughout its history has been lower than in the United States today or since the 1990s. In fact, according to a study by Souza (1998), the United States had a higher percentage of prisoners (relative to the total population) than the USSR ever had:
"In a small news report that appeared in newspapers for August 1997, the FLT-AP news agency reported that the United States had never before had as many people incarcerated as it did in 1996-5.5 million people. This represents an increase of 200,000 since 1995 and means that the number of criminals in the U.S. is 2.8 percent of the adult population. This data is available to anyone who works for the North American Department of Justice… The number of people convicted in the U.S. today is 3 million more than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union! In the Soviet Union, no more than 2.4% of the adult population was incarcerated for their crimes, but in the U.S. the figure is 2.8% and rising! According to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Justice on January 18, 1998, the number of people convicted in the U.S. in 1997 increased by 96,100.
https://diasp.org/posts/19385884#
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