I'm definitely unhappy with the US incarceration levels.

I still think that cutting wood or digging ore in Siberia (see e.g. the weather in the fine city of Norilsk) is noticeably more cruel than serving time in a US prison. A quick googling allows me to assume that forced labor as a punishment has not been used in the US since 1940s, except for rare cases in the military.

I very much hope the the US government, however crooked it might be, is not considering high incarceration level as an engine of economic growth.

Yes, United States stopped using penal labor at twentieth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#United_States). Soviet Union at fifties.

I think 30 years lag is not soo bad considering level of social-economic development of USSR and USA.

Penal labor is extremely prevalent in the US, and if anything, is growing (over 1 million US prisoners today are engaged in penal labor).

It might not be "punative" penal labor, which takes it out of the category of "forced labor." But US prisoners do labor in private prisons for private companies, with the sole remuneration of reducing time from their sentences.

I think that a couple of states in the US southeast still make use of chain gangs and labor.

Yeah right, you had access to free healthcare, 3 meals a day and a lot of leisure time in a Soviet gulag. You are delusional if you think you can compare them.

1. Healthcare was avaliable in GULAG prisoners. And it was free of course 2. Yes, GULAG workers get 3 meals a day (often part as dry ration) 3. Workday in GULAG was about 10 hours, so yes they have about 6 hours leisure time.

But this isn't my point. Of course conditions in prison in modern US is better then in USSR 80 years ago. My point that you have higher probability go to jail in modern US then in USSR in thirtieth. Target for great terror in USSR was elite and it was insignificant (again, lesser then in modern US) for ordinary people.

Not insignificant, however you look at the numbers. But more importantly, what could land you in jail was a simple political joke, or having ancestors of a wrong kind (the "class" of kulak, for instance, as it was defined in the Soviet penal code) or even, in some periods, a random chance.

I look at the numbers because they are something that can not be speculated and manipulated easily.

Lets take a claim "a random chance could land you in jail". I've seen numbers that percent miscarriage of justice in US is about 5-10% (not sure it's correct, but anyway even for death penalty there are many mistakes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution). So for modern US 0.05% (about 160000 people) are in jail by random chance. I don't have numbers of USSR and, again, I am not trying to compare. I show that you should be very careful when using simple claims without numbers.

Or let take "simple political joke". Do you know that in many modern countries you can go to jail for ten years just for telling something that is not accepted by mainstream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#A...)? Again it's incorrect to compare. but I think raw numbers people in prison is quite accurate and objective estimate of "badness" of system. And for USSR in thirtieth numbers doesn't look very terrible.

Numbers can indeed be manipulated easily. I am sure you have heard the term Potemkin village. I am not sure you realize how prevalent this kind of deception is in the world outside of the US and a few other "Western" countries.