The US Prison System Is Actually Larger than Soviet Gulags

Many Americans are quite convinced that they live in one of the
freest nations on the planet. Even if they don’t think that we are the
freest, they still believe that our population has far more rights than
the vast majority of the human race. However, these people tend to
ignore our large prison population. Can you really call it a free
country when that nation restricts the freedoms of such a large
percentage of its population, most whom are convicted of nonviolent
crimes?

What’s more shocking, is that our prison population has reached an ominous milestone over the past few years.

The number of Americans who were in jail and prison, or on probation
and parole, was 7 million people by 2009. When you include former
inmates who have since left our prison system, you wind up with 19
million people as of 2010. This number exceeds the 18 million people who endured the Soviet Gulag system, between 1929 and 1953.