A number of communist states also held forced labor as a legal form of punishment for certain periods of time and again critics of these policies assert that many of those sentenced to forced labor camps such as the Gulag were sent there for political rather than criminal reasons.
许多共产主义国家还通过强制劳动作为一定时期的法律惩处的方式，而且，对这些政策的批评还指出这些人被判进诸如古拉格那样的强制劳动营许多都是出于政治原因而不是因为犯罪。