Totalitarian camps recruit criminals to render their existence plausible

Evidence

The inclusion of criminals is necessary in order to make plausible the propagandistic claim of the movement that the institution exists for asocial elements. Criminals do not properly belong in the concentration camps, if only because it is harder to kill the juridical person in a man who is guilty of some crime than in a totally innocent person. If they constitute a permanent category among the inmates, it is a concession of the totalitarian state to the prejudices of society, which can in this way most readily be accustomed to the existence of the camps. In order, on the other hand, to keep the camp system itself intact, it is essential as long as there is a penal system in the country that criminals should be sent to the camps only on completion of their sentence, that is when they are actually entitled to their freedom. Under no circumstances must the concentration camp become a calculable punishment for definite offenses. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1005

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the claim that the innocent are easier to dehumanize than the guilty — a striking inversion that bears on how scapegoating categories are chosen.