Roscoe Howard, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, argues that the system "isn't broken."
The US, the "Land of the Free", has a per capita prison population that it 5-10 times greater than any of it's first-world colleagues. The system is broken.
There could be other interpretations to that, besides "we are less free!"
Could one not argue that an increase in prison inmates is the unavoidable consequence of increasing freedoms? It seems counter intuitive, but perhaps the more freedoms one has, the more readily one encroaches on freedoms one does not have?
People aren't all that different, and generally want the same things. Besides, the US isn't that much freer than its first-world contemporaries. For example, although we in Australia don't have constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, the Press Freedom Index puts us as having more freedom of public speech than in the US, and both of us are well below most of the northern European states.
The word "freedom" occurs much more frequently in American political discourse, but that does not mean that Americans are automatically freer than anywhere else. I find it hard to believe that those extra freedoms that Americans do have (which most don't seem to exercise in day-to-day life) is sufficient to cause a fivefold increase in per capita prison population.
Another possible explanation that occurs to me today: the punishments in America are greater. The guy who bombed Oslo and killed 80-some kids in Norway is allegedly facing a max of something like 25 years. He'd get multiple life sentences in America.
According to BBC radio this morning it is 21 years although I believe this can be extended for 5 years at a time if they believe he still faces a danger to society.
The US, the "Land of the Free", has a per capita prison population that it 5-10 times greater than any of it's first-world colleagues. The system is broken.