I call it that for several reasons.

1. What constitutes a crime is often, and increasingly, political.
2. What pushes/forces people into crime is almost entirely political.
3. The for-profit prison industrial complex and the slave labor it provides are DEEPLY bound up in politics.
4. The for-profit (gulag) prison system here in the states is bigger, crueler and even less necessary than the one I was told in school was SO scary and such a crime against humanity.
5. Calling it a gulag system draws attention to the intentional cruelty that plagues this country, and (I hope) helps people consider that better methods are not only possible, they actually exist and work.