CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PENITENTIARY SYSTEMS UNDER DICTATORSHIPS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75B00380R000100010008-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2001
• Sequence Number: 8
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Release 2001/11/16 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000100010008-6
MEIY1ORANDUM
On the organization of a research group:
CENTER FOR TIE STUDY OF PENITENTIARY SYSTEMS UNDER DICTATORSHIPS
V SEAS:
1. The ruthless political repression of dissident opinion in the Soviet Union
and other major dictatorships poses a threat to the security of all free
countries;
2. Very little is known in the free world about the scope and nature of
these repressive regimes;
3. Problems concerning forced labor camps and special prisons for political
dissidents under dictatorships have not been studied professionally.
Consequently, people of the world and human rights organizations are not
informed of the conditions in which prisoners are being held (their food,
clothing, work, regulations governing correspondence, and meetings with.
relatives, forms of punishment within the prisons, daily schedule,
coercive measures, methods of sowing dissension among prisoners, etc.);
4. Voluntary social organizations in various countries are attempting to
collect information on prisoners, but are doing this unprofessionally,
unsystematically, and on the basis of their interest in individuals of
a particular nationality: Russians, Ukrainians, Tartars, Poles, Czechs,
Jews, etc. As a result, the data collected by these organizations are
criticized for nonobjectivity.
5. There exists no complete catalogue of all prisoners being held under
dictatorships, and even their number is unkno,,,n;
6. There exists no catalogue of photographs of imprisoned dissidents;
7. There is not a single catalogue of the addresses of the imprisoned
political dissidents' families;
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map g'the locations of labor camps and prisons.
There is no monitoring of the creation of new incarceration facilities;
9. No investigation is being conducted on changing conditions within
political prisons (decrease in food rations, the number of prisoners
inhabiting each barrack or cell, conditions relating to correspondence
and meetings with relatives);
10. There exists no record of official testimonies from witnesses who were
imprisoned under dictatorships;
11. Special psychiatric prisons and camps for criminal offenders are not
being studied for their use as imprisonment facilities for political
dissidents;
12. A wealth of information about conditions in the Soviet Union and other
totalitarian countries is potentially available. But this information
cannot be developed unless there exists an apparatus that can systematically
debrief all of those who have emerged or will emerge from the concentration
camps and political prisons and can collate and organize all of the
information reaching the free world via legal and illegal channels;
13. The organization and publication of this information would put the Soviet
GovernMEnt and other governments under pressure to abandon their more
repressive practices, and in this way would contribute to the:sec=ity of the
free world and to world peace.
Based on the above, we propose the following:
1. The creation at some university or law school of a special research center of
qualified persons for the scientific collection of all data concerning the
present situation of political dissidents in the prisons, labor camps and
other places of incarceration under dictatorships. Such a center should
initially be composed of not more than five researchers and two technical
assist, t ;
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2 . p`@AfR i q8?a~QTAVeV taQ i- a? 7o Bg013~za io0ns0 00~ 01008 e world
interested in aiding political dissidents in prisons under dictatorships;
3. Publication by the Center of a monthly bulletin of new information
concerning the current situation of incarcerated political prisoners.
Approved For Release 2001/11/16 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000100010008-6