13th Essay

Crime has always played a protruding role in our society, and the way it is categorized and punished has been a problem in our American culture. Ava DuVernay is the director of the film 13th. The documentary portrays how the prison system affects people of color. DuVernay was born in Long Beach, California, and the oldest of five. She graduated with a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1995, where she double-majored in English and African American studies. She is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. Her film Selma was nominated for two academy awards. 13th was created for two kinds of audience, those who never heard of it and those who know about it. Race has always been an issue even

Constitution). It explicitly states that “excessive bail shall not be required. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure states that the right to bail in non-capital cases is a federal statutory right. A statutory right can be federal or state. It is a right granted created by legislature or a governing body. Poverty is the new crime. The criminal justice system operates differently for the poor than it does for the rich. The rich get richer and the poor get prison. Thus, in the Kalief Browder case, a sixteen year old African American male accused of stealing a backpack. Browder was offered a plea but denied it because he knew he was innocent. His bond was $10,000 and his family could not come up with that much money so he was forced to sit in jail. He spent three years in jail waiting for trial, two of those were spent in solitary confinement. A perfect example of a broken system. His punishment was cruel and unusual which the 8th amendment prohibits. White collar offenders get away with their crimes easily. White collar crimes are crimes committed by respectable people of high social status in the course of their work (Edwin Sutherland 1939). Molly Ivins states, “The rich get away with looting millions and even if they’re caught get nothing more than a slap on the wrist” (‘This country has two laws’). While others who are convicted

In 13th it reveals how companies like ALEC profit from mass incarceration. Prison equals profit. Chdeiac Joyce states, “Legislation that enables financial gain from prisons, such as mandated harsh sentences for nonviolent crime, were actually written by the prison profiteers, then passed by legislatures in their pay” (‘Punishment for profit’). It’s cheaper for prisoners to do the work which could be the reason of people getting laid off from their jobs. The main goal of mass incarceration is locking people of color out of the mainstream of society for petty offenses. Katie Rose Quandt expressed, “It’s well known that people of color are vastly overrepresented in US prisons. African Americans and Latinos constitute 30 percent of the US population and 60 percent of its prisoners” (Why There’s an Even Larger Racial Disparity in Private Prisons than in Public Ones). As opposed to profiting off inmates there should be reforms put into place to help reintegrate former criminals. The criminal justice system should aim to reduce recidivism, the tendency of a convicted criminal to