Prison System of the United States in "13th" Documentary

13th is a documentary that goes into depth about the prison system in the United States. In the documentary Obama says, “the United States is home to five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners” and in the documentary it says “40 percent of them are black.” (DuVernay) It shows how the American justice system has been driven by racism from the start of slavery to today and our mass incarceration, which shows the role in racial inequality here in America.

Slavery might have been abolished after the Civil war and by making it illegal by passing the 13th Amendment, but that didn’t mean that white people didn’t find loop holes in the amendment. The documentary is named 13th because it refers to the 13th Amendment, which is” Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” This amendment led to the epidemic of mass incarceration here in the US.

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The 13th Amendment allowed white people to bring back slavery but in prisons. A lot of African Americans were arrested after the Civil War era and for minor crimes like loitering causing a prison boom.

The focus of the documentary is how the word criminal has been tied to African Americans and has built this fear in the public and within the black community too. After slavery was abolished African Americans were perceived as dangerous, for example in the film The Birth of a Nation, which perceived African Americans as criminals.

(DuVernay) President Nixon started the “war on crime” which led to the mass incarceration of African Americans. Which led to President Nixon and Reagan start the “war on drugs” which led to this fear that drugs were killing the environment and African Americans were in fault. African Americans were being arrested for having smallest possession of drugs. To President Clinton who made the “Three Strikes Out” law, which says that when a person commits their third violent crime they will be incarcerated forever. Thousands of people who had misdemeanors had to be released to make room for people who violated this law. ALEC also has a big part in this too. This is a conservative group, that gives bills to state lawmakers to pass, and one of those bills being the “Three Strike Out” law. The thing is that we are still seeing the past in the present, and according to the documentary the media is playing a big role in this. Black people are overrepresented in news/media as criminals, and it’s not accurate. The reason that I think that this topic has been overlooked is because America runs away from their past and the truth. Politicians and people have recently talked about how the prison system needs to be downsized but not because we have incarcerated a lot of people for no reason, but because it’s getting too expensive.

This film relates to our course because it talks about or relates to deviance, crime, social control, stigma and the agents of socialization. Before seeing this film, I already had an idea that our criminal justice system was bad and that there was a big difference in race when it came to who was being sent to prison. I didn’t know that politicians passed bills to keep a mass incarceration. I also didn’t know that the US has 25 percent of the worlds prisoners. I personally don’t think that documentary did a good job to show both sides. They did focus on their side more, but they did get a member of ALEC in the film, but the way they edited in and the questions that they asked the ALEC member helped their side.

The two theories that I want to look at is conflict theory and critical theory. Conflict theory is that crime is caused by inequality in society that is caused by class conflict and that laws that are forced upon them. Critical theory is that a small group decide the laws and what crime is so, that they can keep control on those who are committing the crime. In the documentary we see both theories. An example of conflict theory in the documentary is racial segregation and Jim Crow. At this time laws were passed that made African Americans stay in a second-class status. An example of critical theory in the documentary is ALEC, the conservative organization that gives lawmakers bills to pass. These theories are supposed to help

Conflict theory protects the wealthy and powerful, because they are the ones making the laws. This theory started been seen when segregation started happening. African Americans were put in the second-class. But when leaders fought for their equality through the civil right movement unfortunately crime rates went up and politicians started to say that civil rights movement is the reason that crime rates were going up. They would say that giving African Americans their freedom would mean we would become a nation of crime, drugs being one of those crimes. In America illegal drug trade is an billion dollar industry, and to many people this is the way they bring food to the table at home (Bystrova& Gottschalk, 2015 para.19).

Politicians like president Nixon and Reagan started “this war on drugs”, which targeted the black communities. They both focused on drugs like it was a war on terrorists, and when you see who was being arrested it wasn’t a “war on drugs” but a war on the black communities. Nixon got the public to associate drugs with the black community. The thing is that when it comes to who is doing illegal drugs the white middle class community is, but the black community is going to jail for it (Spearlt, 2016 para. 16). During Reagan’s presidency crack was a new drug on the rise, and he put harsher sentencing on it then cocaine. But “Crack was largely an inner-city issue and cocaine was largely a suburban issue” (DuVernay, 2016). He established mandatory sentencing for crack, which means that you got the same time in prison if you were caught with one once of crack and if you were caught with 100 ounces of powder cocaine. This was a way to imprison black and Hispanic people. Men were being taken away from their families and put into prisons, for long sentences. Regan took the “problem of economic inequality, of hyper segregation in America’s cities and the problem of drug abuse, and criminalized all of that in form of the war on drugs” (DuVernay, 2016), he also cut taxes on the rich and this is we see conflict theory fit into our justice system. This goes into the critical theory that small groups make laws to control lower class citizens and decides who goes to jail.

Critical theory also protects the wealthy and powerful. Political tactics are used to keep those in power in power. One of these laws is the law that was supposed to help the black community, which is the 13th amendment. It gave African Americans their freedom and human rights, except those who are criminals. This loop hole allowed white people to enslave African Americans again. Bill Clinton passed the three strike and you are out law in which was passed in California. There were so many third-strike defendants that were awaiting trials in which they had to release “4,200 misdemeanor inmates every month” (DuVernay, 2016) just to make room for third-strikers. This law fits in with the mandatory minimum which didn’t let judges to make the sentences from the circumstance of the crime but have to give mandatory sentencing. People were being sent to prison for life for just for one crime, for example transporting cocaine. Judges are now being required to send people away for life. Then came the federal crime bill which is responsible for 21st century mass expansion in the prison system and how the system is today. This bill gave law enforcement money to put 100,000 people in state prisons for drugs, not only that they now had more police officers out in the field and more equipment, for example SWAT teams. Now Bill Clinton has said sorry for the bills that he passed, he knows that he forced millions of people into jail that wouldn’t be in prison today if he didn’t pass those bills.

ALEC is a conservative organization that gives republican and democrats lawmakers the bill to pass. They gave Bill Clinton the third strike you are out law and are responsible for other laws that makes life hard for minorities and keep the wealthy in power. Stand your ground was written by ALEC and it allows people to protect themselves if they feel threaten. The problem with this law is that is racially bias. If a white person kills a black person they consider it justified, but if it’s the other way around then we see it as a crime. CCA, supported and invested in ALEC. CCA was the first private prison in the US. They made contracts with states that required that their prisons maintain full all the time, even people weren’t committing laws. Now the CCA is a multimillion company. ALEC has made sure that people go to prison and stay in prison for their benefit (American legislative exchange council, 2009 para.1). ALEC is responsible for the prison system that we have, a lot of people were hurt by the polices that they helped pass. They helped pass SB 1070, which allows the police to stop anyone who they think is an immigrant. This benefits the CCA and immigration facilities. They have companies that benefit from mass incarceration (ALEC AND LOUSIANA, 2011, para. 4).

The theories that I picked were seen throughout the documentary. The government has made the justice system in a way where colored communities suffer. For some communities the only way they can get food on the table is by selling drugs, and yes it maybe deviant to the middle and upper class, but it’s a way of survival in the lower class. The justice system has made it hard for people to have a life after being in prison, in most states they can’t vote, they have to put that they were in prison in their job applications. A lot of people can’t get a job so, people go to their old lives and go back to what gives them money like selling drugs. This fits into the conflict theories, where the lower class suffers and critical theory because the government was the one that passed these laws that make it hard for people to leave this unfair system.

If I was a policy maker I would pass a bill that takes down the three-strike law, mandatory minimum, and I would also look over the federal crime bill. These three laws make up our prison system today. The US is spending more on prisons then they are spending on the education system Per student we are spending about 10k-20k, per inmate we are spending 20-60k depending on the state that you live in (Spearit, 2016 para.15). The three-strike law has sent many people to jail for life, and it didn’t have big effect in crime rates, violent acts were still being committed. If it didn’t work why do, we still have it? Instead of crime rates going done, we saw police brutality, and people being violent to the police too. From the three-strike law came mandatory minimum, where a person can be sentenced to life in prison just for transporting drugs and it could be their first felony. Judges no longer get to look at the circumstance and give a sentence. This also took away parole meaning that people had to serve 85% of their sentence (DeVernay, 2016). This doesn’t allow the people that have learned that they have done something bad to have a second chance. The people that study, work hard, become religious, and accepted and learned that they have done something bad don’t get second chances.

There are states like Washington that don’t make people that were in jail mark that in their applications, and this gives them a chance to get their life together.