Analysis Of Mass Incarceration In Ava Duvernay

This targeting led to the incarceration, imprisonment, chain gangs, prison farms and other correctional facilities for tens of thousands of African American men, women, and children.” The idea of mass incarceration being used to systematically oppress black people has traveled to the surface with Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, and Taylor talks about the effect of mass incarceration. In the book, Alexander highlights that the majority of the African American men are either in prison or have some type of criminal record making it unable for them to vote and get jobs. Alexander describes the criminal justice systems as the “New Jim Crow,” a modern type of oppression for African Americans. Mass incarceration rate skyrocketed during the Drug War and many African American were jailed for several years for petty crimes, shown in the documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay. Alexander book shows the oppression of African American and is a statement to change our criminal justice system that is targeted to victimize African Americans. Ultimately, Taylor points out that not only do the police have the power to destroy your body, but by using their power to charge African American men for petty crimes they able to effectively keep African Americans in a lower-class status, supporting the white suprematist view manifested in our police force.

Primarily highlighted in the documentary is the idea of mass incarceration as “The New Jim Crow”, a phrase popularly used by author and civil rights advocate, Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. As many already know with it being a significant part of American history, the Jim Crow era was a time of intense racial segregation of African Americans from whites with the former having drastically inferior positions in society. Many of the discriminatory practices that were upheld in the Jim Crow era, including discrimination in housing, jobs, and voting are illegal now if applied to blacks, but are perfectly legal when applied to prisoners, many of whom are

To dig deeper into this overrepresentation of black criminality, we have to look at the loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment, which allowed slavery as a form of punishment in the prison system. The policymakers recognized the opportunities to acquire forced labor through mass incarceration and made use of the perpetuating cycle of racial formation, where representations and the actions of the institution often reinforce each other. The structural institution, or the policymakers in this case, used overrepresentation of black criminality to racialize crime. The overrepresentation of racialized crime then validates the need of criminal laws and their unequal application across racial groups. In the end, the institution created the false representation that justifies its actions which further feed the representation. The vicious cycle introduced racial discrimination into the justice system and guided the process of mass incarceration.

The 13th characterize our criminal justice system and political institution as unfair and a racist system of oppression for certain color of race. This film gave me a better understanding of how the prisons were treating their prisoners. I was not aware that prisoners were forced into being treated and considered to be slaves. While watching this documentary I was able to understand that the country in which people called land of the free, it's not really the land of the freedom if this system treats prisoners as slaves. While watching the 13th I saw a particular case in which a group of African-American tennagers were arrested and accused of a crime that the system did not have concrete evidence of, but they were still arrested and spent

The documentary “13th” is very telling about the problems with the prison system and society's view of African-Americans. After the end of slavery, the economy too a hit because of the lack of labor needed for the industries. To solve this problem, people turned to prison workers, because it was cheap labor that weren’t protected under the 13th Amendment. This amendment abolished slavery and indentured servitude, but left the clause of criminal punishment. Because of this loophole, and because whites were very much still in control of society soon after the 13th Amendment was passed, police forces began going after African-Americans in order to fill prisons and satisfy work forces.

13th is a 2016 American documentary by director Ava DuVernay. The movie was captured and presented in the form of interviews with various people from the diverse background; from educator to politicians, from black to white, they all generally agree with the fact that mass incarceration has done nothing but damage the society and the people of color. As the movie tried to gather all the opinions and information from people with various socio-economic status, I think it is safe to assume that the primary purpose of this film is to serve the information without being polarized to one party. This movie has disenchanted people to realize that mass incarceration of people of color is a big problem. The reason why this topic has been overlooked for

After closely analyzing Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, my eyes were opened as to how black people feel vs. the way white people may feel about the criminal justice system and the unfair treatment of African Americans. I was honestly disappointed with both sides because of the way the race card is used to justify our actions towards one another.

Mass Incarceration is a huge problem in United States culture. No other country in the world incarcerates its population the way that America does. “The U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world – both per capita and in terms of total people behind bars. The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it has almost 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.” Worse yet the majority of the incarcerated individuals belong to a minority group despite not participating in illegal activity any more frequently than their white counterparts. Is the United States criminal justice system racist and if so what is the cause behind this racism. After the end of slavery, many southern black Americans traveled to the north to escape endless violence and discrimination. In the south they could only find low paying field jobs whereas in the northern cities there were steady factory jobs promised as well as the hope that discrimination could be escaped. The northerners while against slavery were not egalitarian and were not in favor of hoards of black Americans surging into their cities and taking jobs away from the white working poor. The need for social control by white Americans only grew with the population of black Americans living in the cities and working in the factories. The rhetoric of “law and order” first came about in the late 1950s as white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was encouraged by southern governors and law enforcement.

Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

The epidemic of mass incarceration affects many families within the United States. The problems of mass incarceration have been echoed far and wide, but it was not until recent years that the issue has been acknowledged, let alone fully addressed. Authors such as MK Asante and Bryan Stevenson, and filmmakers such as Ava Duvernay, have all discussed mass incarceration and its common threads such as the collapse of family structures, damage to mental, physical, and communal health, amongst other lasting impacts. Despite the commonalities, each artist takes on a different perspective on the issue and presents it in a different light.

The documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay was a visual masterpiece. The documentary provided its viewers with an array of information that spanned throughout centuries and was eloquently executed in less than 2 hours. The central focus of the film was about how the 13th amendment shaped this country and its prison system. The 13th amendment was the building block for mass incarceration and as time has gone on, new laws and amendments strengthened the process for more people to get incarcerated. Slavery benefited the country as a whole and as the Civil War was winding down, slavery was coming to an end. As the documentary states, the South especially relied heavily on slavery for their economy to sustain. After the passing of the 13th amendment, slaves were freed and it left the South’s economy in shambles. A stipulation within the 13th amendment, that states “Neither slavery not involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been dully convicted, shall exist within the United States.” In turn, mass amounts of newly freed slaves were arrested and deemed criminals. Being criminalized reduced them back to a lower status in the United States, and unfortunately reignited slavery in a new kind of form. The film was not only educational, it also provided its viewers with knowledge about why there is such a disparity in mass incarnations amongst people of color compared to their white counterparts.

The documentary 13th featured on Netflix discusses the heavy topics of slavery and mass incarceration in our Criminal Justice System. The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution freed the slaves and prohibited slavery, unless it was a punishment for a crime. Making criminals an exception to this protection made them slaves to the state, again. There has been an immense continuation of slavery through the criminalization of behavior of African Americans in our society and through our Criminal Justice System practices. Convict leasing, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, and the War on Drugs are all systems of oppression that can be seen in today's practices that allow for this perpetuation of slavery, currently recognized as mass incarceration.

The 13th amendment which was ratified in 1865, is outlined in the film 13th by Ava DuVernay. She explores the exploitable loophole left by the 13th amendment which converts slavery from a legal business model to an equally legal method of punishment for criminals. This easily missed clause is carefully examined and revealed to its viewers. The film came at a time where the new generations have seen their peak in police brutality and arrest in the black and minority communities. The film carefully build its points by inspiring levels of shock and outrage that stun and leave viewers disturbed and outraged trying to understand how something so significant has been hidden and missed by the community that needed the understanding the most.

The movie starts by stating that one in four black men will serve in prison at least once in their lives (Duvernay).This immediately clues the viewer into what this documentary will be talking about, at least on a surface level. Most of the movie is filled with interviews from experts on the prison system in America from liberal activists to republican conservatives, all have something to say about imprisonment in America and very little of it is good. The movie recaps the struggle colored people have endured throughout their lives in America from the early days of slavery, to the days of Jim Crowe and finally to modern day prison life and how it is just another form of slavery. One of the main focuses of the film is that the great and might Thirteenth Amendment that freed the slaves and made them American citizens also contains a loophole that strips them of these very rights. The amendment contains a small snippet about how no man may be stripped of his rights except when charged as a criminal (Duvernay). This simple exceptional clause acts as the only way to currently enslave another human being in America, convict them and put them away so you can own their body and soul for life. This clause is where the movie gets it’s name Thirteenth. There isn’t much else to say about the movie without giving away too much, despite being a documentary this movie contains heavy emotional

I believe Baxter does a very good job presenting her point, using both facts and emotional appeal. She has opened my eyes to the problem of mass criminalization that has been growing in America over the past 40 years. I recognize that I have broken the law in many ways over my lifetime, sometimes in small ways and other times possibly quite serious. I think though, that Baxter is correct in saying that whites are less likely to be convicted of the same crimes. I can say now that I have reaped this “benefit” of my color. Had I been held accountable to any of my mistakes in the past I can see a much different path for myself. I’ve done nothing in my past warranting major jail time but with a criminal record I do not think I could be attending