“13th” Exposes the Racism Within America’s Criminal Justice System
Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13th” exposes the prison industrial complex for what it is — a corporate-funded flytrap for forced labor, particularly the labor of African Americans. In light of recent events concerning police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, this topic is more relevant than ever. Regardless of your understanding of these events, “13th” sheds much-needed light on the connection between the roots of American racism and our criminal justice system, a system of modern-day slavery.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”
This excerpt from the U.S. Constitution is known as the 13th Amendment loophole; although this amendment officially abolished slavery, it was never intended to fully secure the rights of African Americans in the first place. After the Civil War, the South lost the majority of its free labor force, and it needed to rebuild its economy. This convenient loophole allowed southern states to unofficially extend the slave system and regain their workforce through imprisonment. Following the Reconstruction, there was a dramatic surge in the arrests of African Americans for petty — sometimes nonexistent — crimes. While this was economically beneficial to former slave states, it also impacted American society as a whole. Black people were permanently labeled as untrustworthy criminals, leading to the unjust arrests and abuses of power inflicted on black Americans across the country today.
Not only did this prejudiced mindset contribute to lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of discrimination, but it also perpetuated the systemic disenfranchisement of African Americans years down the line. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 technically granted African Americans the right to vote without racial discrimination, but other laws put in place would continue to deprive them of this right if they were to become a convicted felon. And for black Americans, that was an easy process. In addition to temporarily — and in nine states, permanently — losing the right to vote, people with criminal records often face difficulty landing jobs, accessing food stamps, and gaining approval for student loans. The justice system goes so far as to punish people long after their sentences have been served, regardless of the severity of their crimes. This process deprives Americans of their voices, and it enforces the cycle of poverty which predominantly affects people of color.
“There are thousands of people in jails right this moment that are sitting there for no other reason than because they’re too poor to get out.” –Michelle Alexander
The criminal justice system targets people of low socioeconomic status and makes it nearly impossible for them to advocate for themselves or resolve their situations. In addition to being subject to biased or unjust arrests, African Americans are expected to pay ridiculous sums of money just to post bail. Many simply cannot afford to do this, so they remain stuck in jail solely because they are poor. Meanwhile, the system works wonderfully for those who are white and affluent, even if they are guilty of a crime. For instance, Thomas Lane, one of the former officers charged in the murder of George Floyd, raised $750,000 in donations to post bail. He is no longer detained. Furthermore, 97% of Americans plead guilty instead of awaiting a trial, regardless of whether they actually committed the crime or not. Because of laws that enforce policies such as mandatory minimum sentences, exercising the right to a trial is often a riskier option as opposed to agreeing to a plea deal. For the vast majority of Americans, it’s a lose-lose situation. The overpopulation of prisons also contributes to this issue; the system handles too many arrests to allow each person a fair trial, and the corporations that profit off of prison labor benefit from increased sentences. The justice system places a variety of criminals under the same umbrella, and the inequitable policymaking that promotes mass incarceration astronomically worsens these circumstances.
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” –John Ehrlichman of the Nixon administration
Today’s mass incarceration began with the War on Drugs, an initiative set forth by the Nixon administration that grew far more aggressive under Reagan. The War on Drugs essentially gave authorities an excuse to target impoverished communities, allowing them to stop, search, and arrest people of color for drug possession disproportionately more than white people. Subsequent policies enforced mandatory minimum sentences to extensively punish even the most minor drug offenses. Another instance of severely unjust policymaking is the 1994 “three-strikes” law which increases the amount of life sentences issued to people convicted of three felonies or serious crimes. It’s easy to see why the inmate population drastically increased from 196,441 in 1970 to nearly 2.3 million — 25% of the world’s prison population — today. In addition to the abusive conditions and overcrowded environments they have to endure, inmates are often forced to work for little or no compensation. Movements such as the War on Drugs have facilitated overpopulation through attempts to demonize and imprison people of color in poor communities, all while creating a profitable workforce.
The prison industrial complex takes systemic racism to a whole new level. Private corporations run prisons and profit off of the free labor they provide, and their lobbyists pull strings in the government to preserve this system. For instance, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an organization consisting of state legislators and corporate representatives that draft legislation and lobby for conservative law. Thanks to ALEC, laws such as “stand your ground” enable police to justify brutality simply on the basis of feeling threatened. This allowed George Zimmerman to walk away scot-free after killing Trayvon Martin, a black, unarmed 17-year-old. Additionally, corporations such as Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, and J.C. Penney have benefited from prison labor. Many more continue to fund ALEC so that people remain in prison working for their companies. The inmate population is valuable to corporations because of this capital gain; thus, ALEC continues to influence government policymaking in their favor. This most immediately harms African Americans who are prosecuted more harshly than other racial groups.
“People say all the time, ‘Well, I don’t understand how people could have tolerated slavery. How could they have made peace with that? How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that?…That’s so crazy, if I was living at that time I would have never tolerated anything like that.’ And the truth is we are living at this time, and we are tolerating it.” –Bryan Stevenson
The likelihood of imprisonment for white men at some point in their lifetime is 1 in 17. For black men, the likelihood is 1 in 3. According to “13th,” black men make up about 40% of the U.S. prison population despite only accounting for 6.5% of the American population. These disproportionate statistics shed light on the explicit racial disparities that exist in our country. Not only are black people branded as criminals by both the police and larger society, but black communities have long suffered under the influence of greedy corporations and discriminatory policymaking. African Americans indisputably bear the brunt of our social, political, economic, environmental, and psychological burdens. It is time to hold our broken justice system and its corrupt perpetrators accountable for the cycle of pain and injustice they inflict on America’s most vulnerable. Educate yourself, sign petitions, contact your representatives, protest, and vote. Show the country — and the world — that black lives matter. Change is long overdue.
