Npars01, 4 months ago

@anneapplebaum

Russia has done this before.

During the Greek "Civil War", thousands of Greek children were stolen and shipped to Bulgaria

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo12274715.html

Leisureguy, 4 months ago

@anneapplebaum The US has 2,068,800 people in prison; Russia has 471,490.

The US incarceration rate (prisoners as proportion of population) is 629 per 100,000. Russia's incarceration rate is 326 per 100,000.

You were saying?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country

samueljohnson, 4 months ago

@Leisureguy @anneapplebaum Indeed, the US is a carceral state. However, not many of its incarcerated are political prisoners.

archliberal, 4 months ago

deleted_by_author

Leisureguy, 4 months ago

@archliberal Good point. Thanks for explaining. That distinction is important, and I can see that the issue of the US's unusually high incarceration rate belongs to a different discussion.

What prompted my post was referring to Russia as a "carceral state." I think that phrase would be better omitted since that applies equally to the US. For the state to take children with their families not knowing where they are is especially bad.

LynneJones, 4 months ago

@Leisureguy @anneapplebaum They’re both appalling - but US definitely worse. Would be interesting to have breakdown of nature of crimes requiring incarceration.

accretionist, 4 months ago

deleted_by_author

Leisureguy, 4 months ago

@accretionist @LynneJones @anneapplebaum

I agree that I missed the point (that in Russia people are jailed for opinions). I do think that "carceral state" would be a state that incarcerates many of its citizens, and with that meaning, the US is more a carceral state than Russia.

The ambiguity vanishes if the phrase "carceral state" is not used. It would be more straightforward to say that Russia imprisons people for political reasons.