Slavery Vs Incarceration In America

After 245 years of slavery, the United States consistently tries to redefine itself as an inclusive country in attempt to erase their past. In reality, those who are in power have found new ways to enforce their power on non whites, specifically African-Americans in America, one of which is through the prison system. Eller mentions that although the percentage in the American population of black men are 12 percent, they constitute for 44 percent of arrests for violent crimes (Eller, pg. 280). In addition, African-Americans are given longer prison sentences for the same crime committed by

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 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.

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.

Racial inequality is growing. Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased. My research will examine the U.S. criminal justice policies and how it has the most adverse effect on minorities. According to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, out of a total population of 1,976,019 incarcerated in adult facilities, 1,239,946 or 63 percent are

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander tries to advance intellectual dialogue regarding mass incarceration in the United States. Alexander does this by carrying out a historical analysis of the process in which the correctional system controls African Americans through intentionally selected, and systematically sanctioned legal limits. In fact, the United States incarceration rate is not at peak by coincidence. Moreover, it is not coincidental that Black men and women make up the majority of this number. According to Alexander, this problem is a consequence of the “New Jim Crow” rules, which use racial stratification to eliminate black individuals in the legal sense. Black people and a small number of the Hispanic community face racial stratified laws when they face the justice system. This paper will support the claims that race is a major factor in the incarceration of black men in the United States, which includes the Jim Crow system, the slave system and the drag war. This process will also involve analyzing of some of the arguments presented within the book.

Of the many tribulations that plague Americans today, the increase in the amount of African American men and women in prisons is unbelievable. It would be naïve to say that the increase is due to the fact that more African Americans are committing crimes now than before. When in actuality it has very prevalent connections to a systematic plan to incarcerate a race of people by creating harsh drug laws to

American has a legacy of the mistreatment and disenfranchisement of African Americans. The same bad treatment that many think only took place in the past is in fact still intact, it’s just presented in a new way. The mass incarceration of blacks in the Unites States can be attributed to the “racial hierarchy” that has always existed. The U.S contributes to about 5% of the worlds overall population, and about 25% of the worlds prison population (Holland 1), “if those rates reflected jail, probation and parole populations, the numbers would rise exponentially”(Griffith 9). Statics show that there is a chance that about 1 in 3 black males are expected end up in prison (Jacobson). Although, in terms of the entire United States population African Americans only make up about 13% (Prison Activist Resource Center. Racism Fact Sheets: “ Latinos and the Criminal Injustice System.” 2003). There is a huge number of African Americans involved in the criminal justice system in some way. The average person does not know about mass incarceration nor about the racism that is in just about every part of the criminal justice system. When most people think about racism their thoughts often drift to slavery or Jim Crow laws, but for most, they do not consider how the amount of African Americans in prison today could be due to bias or racism. A significant cause of mass incarceration is the same racism that produced the Jim Crow era.

The perpetual cycle of racial injustice in the United States of America from the end of slavery onward has birthed the nation’s racially biased mass incarceration of black men. Black men have been depicted as criminals since the beginning of American history, and while many think that the thirteenth amendment was a turning point toward ending the plight of African American slaves, it may have instead prohibited their social rise. The thirteenth amendment did not not necessarily end slavery; it simply changed the conditions under which slavery existed. In Ava Duvernay’s documentary 13th, author and former convict Shaka Senghor claims, “the thirteenth amendment says, ‘no involuntary servitude except for those who have been duly convicted of a

The United States has the highest number of prisoners compared to any country in the world according to Denis J.Madden published in the America Magazine. Imprisoning hundreds of thousands African Americans has been significantly effective in society for several years. The criminal justice system enforces the law strictly in the African American society with brutal prosecution. As a result, the rate of poverty and unemployment in the African American community have been increasing for the last couple of decades as reported by

The institution of slavery dates back before written records. The term slave was originally a derivative from the historical French and Latin medieval word for Slavic people of central and Eastern Europe. [ (wikipedia, 2010) ] In North America, the class system is systematically at the root of every socioeconomic and political issue resulting in Super companies, multibillionaires and the formation of lobbyists and special interest groups; there always has and always will be the have and have-nots. Unfortunately, for African Americans who have historically been the have-nots, that does not seem to have changed as evidenced by recent events like the Jenna 6. African Americans have a history uniquely

A life of servitude sounds better than slavery one would think. Committing a petty crime in America, could yield a life of bondage in the prison system, once released for time served. Convicted felons what society calls ex-prisoners are constantly tormented with life on the inside of prison bars, while attempting to adapt to life on the outside of prison bars. Offenders, struggle emotionally, physically, from his or her experiences while incarcerated, and financially of course secondary to conviction, some or unable to gain employment. Resulting, back to a life of crime. Lawmakers continue to pass tougher laws on petty convictions, while privately funded correctional organizations are all about the capital, not the rehabilitation and or

How has society disguised slavery.my essay is going to be about comparing and contrasting early slavery and modern day slavery for two articles. Slavery should have never been a option for labor in my personal opinion. It is inhuman.No one should be forced to do something for anyone if it has no good reason behind it.

Slavery has a huge impact on life today. The articles “West African country struggles to come clean on its role in slavery” and “Time Machine (1846): A slave auction in New Orleans” show many similarities between each other and various differences. The articles written by “Northrup” and by”Kevin Sief” have various similarities and differences. These two passages are diverse and related in a variety of ways.

The exploitation of prisoners by the U.S. is not color blind. There is a disproportionately large amount of people of color incarcerated in this country. There are more Native Americans per capita in prison than any other group (Davis). Latino people are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites (PrisonPolicy.org). Black men make up 60% of the prison population (McCalla). Michelle Alexander states in The New Jim Crow that there are more Black men "in prison or jail, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850." This is not because of the erroneous idea of Black men naturally being delinquent. It is because the prison industrial complex was deliberately manufactured to directly replace the profit the country made through the enslavement of African-Americans.