Gulag United States
(Another piece I wrote for English class with revisions. It was in response to an online post so that’s why it starts with “All very important questions that you raise!” )
All very important questions that you raise!
I would argue that the American government already maintains the equivalent of Soviet gulags in principle. To make sure that I am not misunderstood when I say this, here’s a few definitions of gulag from Dictionary.com.
“1. the system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union.
2. a Soviet forced-labor camp.
3. any prison or detention camp, esp. for political prisoners.
Obviously, the first two can’t apply to any situation in the United States but the third quite rightly could. The prison-industrial complex does fall under the third definition. An unnecessarily large prison population exists in the United States. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population. A great deal of those imprisoned are nonviolent drug offenders or other victims of cultural persecution.
Another example of how gulags connected to the United States are existent is Guantanamo Bay where the prisoners are held indefinitely (not being able to challenge their imprisonment in the courts system after the passage of the Military Commissions Act)
Good further reading on prison abuse can be found at Once Upon a Time under The Alice Miller Essays.
Scrolling down should eventually get you to a heading called About Prison Abuse and Torture in the U.S., and in Iraq.
Just some food for thought!
(I forgot to mention the ghost prisons maintained by the CIA)
Natasha | Civil Liberties, Drug War, Prison-Industrial Complex
[...] new post to highlight is one pertaining to the gulags — and see an earlier writing that was also [...]