VICE Special Report: Fixing The System

Superior Essays
VICE Special Report: Fixing the System is a documentary about mass incarceration in U.S. It follows president Barrack Obama on his historic visit to federal penitentiary. He is first us precedent to ever visit one. The report starts off by telling us about the prison population book that accrued in 1980s. Than it goes and introduces many prisoners that are currently doing time in the system. Majority of them are in there because of drug convictions. Most of them are nonviolent offenders convicted and serving decades due to the sentencing guidelines that are in current use. Furthermore most of the inmates in the documentary never seen the inside of the court room. The system is set up in such a way that if you were to take your case to trial …show more content…
It wouldn’t believe that we have the amount of people incarcerated as we do. Also the racial disparity of inmates in prison and their sentences would be eye opening. The laws that were used to cause the prison boom would also not make a lot of sense. The report would defiantly try to raise awareness to issues of sentences received by non violent drug offenders and the lack of cases taken beign to trial. Also people would take issue to plea bargaining practices that prosecution is using. People would think that the system is unfair and broken if it threatens you with tougher sentences if you are trying to excursive your constitutional right to trial. Another issue that documentary is trying to raise is recidivism rate in the nation is high. Over 50% of people go back. The documentary brings up importance of in prison education importance, acquisition of real world transferable job skills and programs that help inmates deal with their personal issues. Allan Vernon’s on the job 85 month long training by Unicore is great example how we could drastically reduce recidivism rates. Allan has a welding job waiting for him when he gets out. But that is not case for everyone. Most jobs will not even look your application if you have felony on your record. Felons in many parts of the country are not allowed by law to receive any help from the states they live in. This includes public housing, food assistance, business and student loans. Non-criminal justice viewer would now know the basic state of the correctional system in United States. What works and what doesn’t. The viewers could get galvanized by issues portrayed in this documentary and take their issues to social media they could start a grass movement to overall criminal justice system. They could elect leaders to congress that would represent them and their believes. With enough of publics outcry the racially and economic biased policies could be overturn with

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