13th: The Prison System

Improved Essays
In Ava DuVernay’s film 13th, the prison system is presented as the new form of slavery by how it maneuvers around the thirteenth amendment and contains elements that resemble slavery. The prison system has been an issue that has been growing by the years with the numbers of imprisonment moving up. Immigration detention centers have become known as a form of prison because of the way they are set up and the reasoning of money that fall behind them in order to keep them running. The way government goes about immigration creates a sense of fear into the families of immigrants and presents immigrants as criminals. Resulting in a misconception of a particular race. Immigration has always been an ongoing issue. Detention centers have become

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    In this section of his book “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison”, Michel Foucault describes the panopticon. This is an architectural design used in many prison systems. There is a central tower surrounding by a ring-shaped building divided into cells. Each cell has two windows, one facing the tower and the other on the outer side.…

    • 58 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The connection between the 13th amendment with our current prison population is slavery and mass incarceration. DuVernay, the filmmaker of first started off the film establishing the connection between the increasing statistics of prisoners in the United States and the post Civil War. During the documentary, in my notes I wrote down, “There are more blacks in the criminal justice today than then number that were enslaved in the 1850s”. DuVernay believes that the U.S prison system is actually a continuation of slavery due to incarceration. Going back to the connection of the historical context, the 13th amendment was made to allow the South to recuperate after the economy crashed through the cause of prison labor.…

    • 116 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the documentary 15 to Life, Kenneth Young was 14 years old when the first crime happened, he attempted robbery and attempted robbery another 3 times. Kenneth was charged with 4 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for all robberies at age 14/15, while Jacque Bethea a 24-year-old man was tried and sentence to 1 concurrent life sentence; which is a lesser sentence than the juvenile. Kenneth was able to get a resentencing under Graham v Florida, which states that children are different from adults. Even though the offenders do everything possible to rehabilitated while in prison the court/judge doesn’t believe that is enough to resentence Kenneth.…

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The film 13th directed by Ava DuVernay is a documentary about the direct and indirect slavery of African Americans ever since the first African was taken away from his or her home land in the seventeenth century. The title, “13th”, refers to the 13th amendment which was supposedly passed to abolish slavery and the 150 years of unfair treatment that occurred even after that amendment was ratified. This documentary’s purpose is to showcase all the unacceptable events that blacks have been through for the past hundreds of years and to emphasize that all lives matter including those of people of color. 13th displays how unfair treatment evolved from slavery to unnecessary imprisonment to segregation to being seen as a threat by the community.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Her book challenges us to stand up to the human rights havoc in our correctional facilities. As she so convincingly contends, the contemporary U.S. routine of super-imprisonment is nearer to new age slavery than to any conspicuous arrangement of criminal equity. One quote from her book that presents the matter in a rhetorical question, “the fact that more than two million people (out of a world total of nine million) now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails, youth facilities, and immigrant detention centers. Are we willing to relegate ever larger numbers of people from racially oppressed communities to an isolated existence marked by authoritarian regimes, violence, disease and technologies of seclusion that produce severe mental instability?” Davis even faced the effects of system herself when she was accused for plotting or conspiring regarding the 1970 armed control of a Marin County, California, court, in which four people were murdered.…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    "“Where slavery and involuntary servitude is abolished, with the exception as punishment for a crime. That is the 13th amendment, the movie 13th was published in 2016 which elaborates on enslavement and our justice system. 13th was directed by Ava Duvernay showing Americans how the 13th amendment is abused by our justice system.“Where Duvernay is an African American woman who directed 13th which showed a lot of political interviews and interviews with people that have experienced the corrupt justice system. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was the first African American to get a doctorate degree Henry is a Black Lives Matter supporter and was interviewed in 13th. This can create some controversy because in his past he had some trouble with the police, making him biased on the questions he is asked in 13th.…

    • 699 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the PBS film Prison State, filmmakers follow the lives of four individuals throughout incarceration in the Kentucky Criminal Justice system, as well as efforts made to reform the system and the effect on inmates. They also studied the impact of criminalization of Juveniles for minor crimes, and the incarceration of the mentally ill and drug addicted. Among the many staggering statistics revealed on the Kentucky Criminal Justice System in the film, was the amount spent on housing the growing inmate population. According to the film, the state of Kentucky’s spending jumped by 220%, about half a billion dollars, in housing inmates between 1999 and 2010.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The 13th is a powerful documentary on the 13th Amendment of the American Constitution. The documentary starts with discussing 13th Amendment which slavery in the U.S. unless it is a punishment for a crime one has been found guilty. This technicality in the Amendment legalized some form of enslavement in the American institutions. In fact, it has been exploited as a tool for mass incarceration and criminalization of the blacks. The 13th is a historical analysis that links slavery to current prison industrial complex.…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    13th is a Netflix documentary that examines the connection between race, mass incarceration, and slavery. 13th was written by Ana DuVernay, an American screenwriter and director. Ana DuVernay is also known for her contribution Selma. 13th focuses on a single question that many Americans may have: “If the 13th Amendment of the US constitution freed black people, then why are so many black people not free?” The filmmakers examine many hindering factors that the black community have faced or may face in the future.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    “Except for punishment of a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” This loophole in the 13th amendment of the Constitution provides the basis for The 13th documentary. The documentary travels through time detailing events from the convict leasing in post- Civil War America to the war on drugs and Black Lives Matter movement of today. Director Ava DuVernay’s takes a thoroughly researched and well-informed look at the incarceration system of the United States. An incarceration system that has been the center of numerous political debates and is related to several other large racial controversies. Throughout the documentary, the 13th maintains the stance that unjust policies and laws have been a driving force in incarceration…

    • 1479 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The 13th Documentary

    • 1739 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The issues surrounding different races, especially African American in the United States, is a story about as old as this country. And even though times have changed and slavery is no longer legal, the issues of the past have changed the way African Americans are marginalized. For this history paper, I decided to watch the documentary “The 13th”, directed by Ava DuVernay. Although, slavery may be gone the new major issue to arrive is mass incarceration of African Americans by the thousands, that did not just magically appear but was crafted by hundreds of years of oppressions of African Americans. Right away in the beginning of the film we learn that the United States is home to 1/4th of the Prisoners in the world, that equals 2.3 million…

    • 1739 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Over the past century, U.S. incarceration rates have nearly doubled, while crime rates have been nearly cut in half. “The United States leads the world in incarceration, with over 2 million people behind bars; that is a 500 percent increase over the past 40 years”, according to Aristotle Jones in “The Evolution: Slavery To Mass Incarceration”, this divergence is not a function of crime, in fact, it is the rooted deep in slavery. Slavery was abolished in 1865 with the end of the Civil war and passing of the 13th amendment. Although, the racial caste in the United States did not end and the idea of using race as a market of value still continued. Jones (2016) mentioned that America built a new prison every two weeks, which they were not able…

    • 1962 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With recent talks on Capitol Hill of an upcoming criminal justice reform, it is not surprising to see topics on sentencing structure, police ethics and practices, and the future of the criminal justice system in the news headlines. One of the biggest topics is the overwhelming prison population in state and federal prisons. This has been a prominent topic for some time now. While some want to curtail the prison community others seem to think there is not a visible complication. Those who sense the prison population or the amount of people under supervision of the criminal justice system is of no concern, more than likely do not understand the impact the population has on criminal justice professionals or where the funding for these institutions…

    • 775 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “13th”, a 2016 documentary, dives deep into details regarding prison systems in the United States. The documentary discusses the history of inequality as well. The title “13th” gets its name as reference to the thirteenth amendment. The thirteenth amendment states that it is unethical for one to become a slave; this documentary shows just how ironic it is that prisoners often times get treated as one. Though, some may disagree.…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This experiment went wrong and led to mental problems. These problems became so extreme that the experiment was discontinued after 6 days instead of 2 weeks. The Stanford Prison Experiment called into question the idea of Good vs Evil. The experiment showed how situational journey can cause an individual to “compromise” their beliefs. This change in behavior lead to psychological conflict among the “guards” and “prisoners.”…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays