Criminal Justice System In The Film 13th By Ava Duvernay

Although society is responsible for accepting the historical master narratives that connect African Americans to criminality, more individuals are beginning to realize the issue that internal racism causes. Documentaries, like 13th, are increasing in popularity, causing vast audiences to notice that many of the historical master narratives regarding race and criminality are imprecise. This specific documentary exposes how the media inaccurately depicts African Americans as criminals, and therefore, society should not always trust the media’s representation of individuals. By portraying how African Americans are criminalized, this documentary also offers solutions as to how the problem of mass incarceration can be solved; through not only educating police officials and training them to approach situations in a colorblind manner, but also adjusting structural components, such as laws that require extremely long sentences for committing petty crimes, the amount of minorities jailed for committing petty crimes will decrease drastically, thus allowing federal and state spending to be directed toward more important

African Americans are oppressed by the Jim Crow laws which ultimately separated White Americans and Black Americans by creating Black only restaurants or White only bathrooms. And if a person of African heritage did not comply with these laws? They were likely to be brutalized by police. In this day and age many would like to believe that African Americans no longer have problems when it comes to policing or unjust treatment from society. Unfortunately, this is not the case. With several unjustified killings or beatings of African American people from police over the span of many decades, is there an abnormally high rate of incidents with negative outcomes between police officers and

Although there were many compelling aspects of this documentary, 13th’s organization of its facts are worthy of mention. 13th moves beautifully through more than a century worth of brutal history while maintaining a clear format that provides information on the racial violence and the unjust justice system. Published in The New York Times, Dargis’s review of 13th obviously agrees. In “The Journey From Shackles to Prison Bars”, Dargis’s review agrees that the way DuVernay transitions throughout the film elicits a genuine and deep emotional response. The order in which they present their facts enabled me to clearly understand their stance on the argument that they were presenting. For instance, DuVernay develops the documentary through the time lapse of African American history. She begins with the days of slavery and works her way through modern exploitation so seamlessly.

Ironically, “Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or, were armed or threatening the officer with potentially lethal force.” “Alternatively, some believe that these statistics are

Numbers suggest that, for instance, while Blacks compose six percent of population in St. Clayton city, they represent 57% of overall police arrests. Similarly, the probability of Black arrest in Berkeley (CA) and Madison (Wis) cities is nine times higher than other racial groups compared to their corresponding population. In addition to this, Bureau of Justice statistics report that at the national level, Blacks are two times more likely to be arrested compared to Whites. Concurring with media reports and national statistics institutes’ estimates, empirical studies also report high proportion of minority arrests compared to their representation in the population (Golub, Johnson, & Dunlap, 2007).

13th, a documentary in which scholars, activists, and politicians analyze our very own criminalization of African Americans, is a moving film, in which the director, Ava DuVernay, uses ethos, pathos, and logos to support her argument. The relevance of the film is apparent in the state of the United States criminal justice system of today. The main argument of this film was the wrongful justification of the mass incarceration and treatment of African Americans in the United States. However, many people would still find things to point out that prevents the audience from getting the whole of the issue.

“Billions Behind Bars” opened with a segment on a large prison called Idaho Correctional Center in Kuna, Idaho. The prison is so dangerous that it is nicknamed “Gladiator School” merely because assaults and violent acts are so common. This then lead into several statistics about how many people and how much money is sunk into prisons nation-wide, and how the numbers measure up in relation to other

1) After viewing the 13th documentary, I felt helpless, inspired, and stirred to action. Throughout the film, it shows the crucial way white people mistreated black people and how blacks had little to no freedom in America.The message of the film is hopeful and inspiring because it shows that if you want change, you have to fight for it and stand up for yourself. The blacks started to fight for themselves and their rights.

At the database situated on nytimes.com, it was expressed that "49% of individuals killed by police from may of 2013 to april 2015 were white. 30 percent of them were dark . Yet, 63% of this present nation 's populace are white and dark are only 12%. It was established that dark man were 3.5 times more inclined to be killed by cops than white man .

There are more people incarcerated in the United States of America than any other country in the world willing to count their inmates (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016). How can this be? Foremost, the criminal justice system in the United States of America (which is made up of the police, the courts, and the corrections) is not working toward reducing mass incarceration the way it should be. The criminal justice system is set up strategically to accomplish two goals: to bring in money and to gain power. The byproducts of achieving these two goals are mass incarceration, ethnic and racial profiling, and minimal justice. The system needs to change its goals to: reducing crime and doing justice. The police, the courts, and the correctional system all feed off of one another and affect each other. Therefore, if real change is going to be made, it needs to happen in all three branches of the criminal justice system. A system that seems to be working well is in Norway. Norway’s criminal justice system does not look like America’s system. The criminal justice system in Norway has different philosophies concerning crime, justice, and the corrections. "We don 't look at our inmates as criminals, but rather as regular people who have committed a crime." (Skulberg, 2010, p. 73) This is a quote from a Norwegian prison guard giving an example of the ideology in Norway. In order for the United States to reduce crime and to have true justice, first, the policing model needs to change

For decades, America’s attention has been turned to the deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement. The roots of the outrage & unrest that often follow such killings go back much, much, much further. It is very obvious that there is a difficult relationship between law enforcement & the communities we are sworn to serve and protect. There are tons of studies proving police are implicitly biased against African Americans. Racism in law enforcement has had disastrous effects on society as evidenced by recent cases in the U.S.

While racism might appear to be the primary cause of a higher proportion of African American deaths by police, when comparing that to crime rates and police encounters by African Americans, the proportional gap significantly lessens. According to “the counted” police shootings database by the guardian newspaper, police shootings of African Americans in 2016 make up around 25% even though they only make up 13% of the population. This one statistic has led many people from the general public, media, and scholars to attribute this as evidence for racism. What they fail to mention however, is that according to the FBI database on crimes committed by race in 2011, African Americans commit 28.4% of all crimes, 50% of homicides, 55.6% of robberies, and 33.6% of aggravated

According to a Washington Post database of lethal police shootings 24 unarmed black men have been shot and killed by police so far this year. This means one a black man dies every nine days. Three unarmed black men were shot and killed in the month of April alone. All three shootings were either caught on tape or reported on local TV. The 24 unarmed black men that were killed compose a startling small amount of the 585 people shot and killed by police. According to The Post database. Most of those killed were white or Hispanic, and a good number of all races were armed. However, according to Wesley, black men accounted for 40 percent of the 60 unarmed deaths, even though they make up just 6 percent of the U.S. population.

The number of people in the carceral system is an astounding problem in and of itself. The United States holds more inmates than any other place in the world. The American prison population is continually increasing by 50,000 to 80,000 a year. Much of the large number of people in prison can be largely attributed to the people who have committed nonviolent offenses. Big money has corrupted this massive system,

Title: The Prison Industry in the United States: An Odd Form of Protection of Human Rights