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.
