In jail, you were confined. Usually your sentence was stay in jail. Maybe some literal classroom lessons. You’d be able to have your family visit. You were even in the same area you were arrested in the vast majority of the time, unless you were in a really rural location that simply did not have a jail, in which case you’d be transferred to the nearest village or city with a jail.
In gulags your sentence was hard labor, confinement, and total isolation.
It’s the difference between jail and prison in the US, or even most countries these days.
How is that a “vast” difference exactly?
In jail, you were confined. Usually your sentence was stay in jail. Maybe some literal classroom lessons. You’d be able to have your family visit. You were even in the same area you were arrested in the vast majority of the time, unless you were in a really rural location that simply did not have a jail, in which case you’d be transferred to the nearest village or city with a jail.
In gulags your sentence was hard labor, confinement, and total isolation.
It’s the difference between jail and prison in the US, or even most countries these days.