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The Netflix original documentary 13th directed by Ava DuVernary focuses on race in the United States Criminal Justice System. The documentary is named after the thirteenth amendment in the constitution. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except when it was a punishment for a crime. The documentary uses archival footage and commentary from experts to show how the exception to the thirteenth amendment allows the legal system to be exploited and target black people to enslave them. The documentary also charts the growth from America’s prison population from 1970 at 200,000 prisoners until today at 2.3 million prisoners. Although the United States has only 5% of the world’s population, it has about 25% of the worlds …show more content…
The main functions of the police include enforcing the law as well as keeping the peace and protecting life and property. When executing these functions, police are given broad discretion. The discretion gives police the choice to make about which people to target, what to target them for, and when to arrest and book them. Some officers take advantage of their ability to use their discretion. This is where police brutality comes in to play. Police Brutality has been going on throughout history it is just easier to be displayed today because of technology advancement. There’s a great population of people who have been wrongly convicted by the police, but African American males are the main group being targeted. At the age of 16, Khalief Browder was wrongly accused for a crime he didn’t commit. Browder was taken to the precinct and told he would allowed to go home after he was questioned. He was never allowed to go home and was asked to post a bail of $10,000 which his family couldn’t pay. Later, Browder was given the plea deal to choose between 15 years in prison or going home by admitting to a crime he didn’t do. Browder decided to not take the deal because although he would have his freedom, justice would not be served. The court basically punished Browder for not taking the plea deal. This eventually took a toll on his mental health and he tried to commit suicide multiple times while in prison. Two …show more content…
The prison industrial complex maintains the current systems of power by responding to social and economic concerns with policing and imprisonment. Physically controlling people by denying them basic freedoms and holding them in cages is an effective way of preventing people from upsetting the status quo. Every day, prisons make up contracts with private companies who have a lot to gain from cheap labor. Federal Inmates are making the products sold by companies like JCPenny’s, Victoria’s Secret, and Idaho Potatoes. Unicor, an American government corporation that exploits penal labor to produce goods and services, profits $900 million a year while they pay their work crews as little as 23 cents an hour. The United States is the only country in the world that relies on imprisonment
The documentary 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay, is centered around the argument that slavery did not end with the inclusion of the 13th Amendment in the United States Constitution. To enhance her argument, she includes interviews with well-educated authors, professors, activists, and politicians. She also tells the stories of African Americans who have been wrongfully prosecuted by the police and have not received the justice they deserve, including Trayvon Martin. This essay will analyze the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman scene in the documentary and how DuVernay effectively uses ethos, pathos, and logos in the film. Duvernay includes the Trayvon Martin case to further her argument that slavery did not disappear with the 13th Amendment;
The justice system is in place in America to protect its citizens, however in the case of blacks and some other minorities there are some practices that promote unfairness or wrongful doing towards these groups. Racial profiling is amongst these practices. In cases such as drug trafficking and other criminal acts, minorities have been picked out as the main culprits based off of skin color. In the article “Counterpoint: The Case Against Profiling” it recognizes racial profiling as a problem in America and states, “[In order to maintain national security] law-enforcement officers have detained members of minority groups in vehicles more than whites”…. “these officers assume that minorities commit more drug offenses, which is not the case” (Fauchon). In relationship to law enforcement there has also been many cases of police brutality leaving young blacks brutally injured, and even dead in recent years, cases such as Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddy Gray just to name a few. Many of these young men were unarmed, and the police involved had no good justification for such excess force. They were seen as threats primarily because of their skin color. Despite the fact this nation is trying to attain security, inversely they are weakening bonds between many of its
To illustrate, majority of blacks are stop by police more than any other racial groups. Police brutality is base on ethnicity. Officers seem to target black communities for many reasons. Racist cops might view blacks as less innocent compared to whites. Growing up as an African American you witness hearing your parents telling your male siblings to respect officers and to interact with them differently than they would do their families and friends. After the fatal shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The public wanted justice because the incident was not handled properly. The people wanted to express their concerns. After this incident I remember more allegation from black communities begin surfacing that the police use excessive force against them,
Police brutality has been a significant issue for many years.. The people affected by this most of all, are people of color. They are subject to racial inequality by the police and the justice system every day. They are being killed everyday simply for existing. The excessive force used by the police specifically towards African Americans is continuous; with the justice system doing close to nothing to change that. This is one of the reasons they continue to kill and harass African Americans. According to Propublica, young black males are about twenty times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than their white peers are. Murderers are walking free, and innocent lives are being taken. Over the past couple of years, thousands of people have been killed on the hands of the police, both black and white.
Shockingly, there seem to be a few people who actually profits from keeping people in jails. The practice of mass incarceration who most see as a major problem in the United States of America is actually beneficial to some. The prison system in the United States who was create to keep dangerous criminals at bay is now a major source of profit for some private corporations. John W. Whitehead, attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute writes that, “ the flawed yet retributive American “system of justice” is being replaced by an even more flawed and insidious form of mass punishment based upon profit and expediency.” Some blame the war on drugs as the main reason for the mass incarceration; others blame racism. Although those components do play a major role in the affair, a closer look at at the mastermind behind the prison industrial complex suggest that the privatization of the prison system has become the main reason why mass incarceration exist so forcefully in the United States and is a crime against the people of the people of
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 imprison mostly African American, non-violent drug offenders. Since these drug laws were enforced strictly, African Americans have filled our prison systems in outstanding numbers. Consequently causing an overcrowded prison. Private companies, which contain private contracts with the prison, use the inmates as a source of free or cheap labor. One may ask themselves, "Is this ethical?" Absolutely not. They allow the public to believe that it is beneficial because has no expense to tax payers, however the only real benefit is to the company itself. The company has managed to attain free or cheap labor while simultaneously increasing their net profits.
Goldberg, Eve, and Linda Evens. "The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Global Economy." Global Research. 18 Oct. 2001. Web. www.globalresearch.ca/articles.
In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
At the 106th national NAACP convention, Barack Obama presented an astonishing fact, “The United States is home to 5% of the population, but 25% of the world's prisoners, think about that.” Directed by Ava DuVernay the Netflix Documentary “13th” presents the issues of the incarceration system throughout the United State’s history. By exploring the 13th amendment to the US Constitution, race behind prisoners, and the overall increasing amount of prisoners, the author effectively presents the argument. Logos, one of the most powerful rhetorical appeals used in the documentary, with statistics from start to finish about the prison system since the beginning of the country. Following the statistics, there is ethos containing credible sources.
Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System “We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment,” stated Senator Russ Feingold. Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in Institutional racism is racism that is shown through government organizations and political institutions. In a report done by David Baldus in 1998, he discovered that when it comes to the death penalty, blacks are more likely sentenced to death than whites, and those who kill whites are more likely to be given the death penalty than the killing of blacks (Touré).
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001.
A number of African American people have been murdered by members of the police force and there still has yet to be any justice for them. The fact that members of a force that are meant to protect us, are actually killing many, brings on a feeling of uneasiness and distrust. They’re targeting innocent members of society for no other reason than their skin color. And justice hasn’t been accomplished in honor of all the people that were murdered. This proves just how unjust the criminal system is and how much work needs to be done to bring justice and equality for every gender, race,
Police brutality is one of the most serious human rights violations in the United States and it occurs everywhere. The reason why I chose this topic is because police brutality happens all the time in the United States and still remains unrecognized by many. Additionally, the public should be knowledgeable about this topic because of how serious this crime can be and the serious outcomes that police brutality can have on other police officers and the public. The job of police officers is to maintain public order, prevent, and detect crimes. They are involved in very dangerous and stressful occupations that can involve violent situations that must be stopped and controlled by any means. In many confrontations with people, police may find it necessary to use excessive force to take control of a certain situation. Sometimes this makes an officer fight with a suspect who resists being arrested. Not all cops in communities are great cops. At least once a year, the news covers a story about a person being beat by an officer. The article “Minority Threat and Police Brutality: Determinants of Civil Rights Criminal Complaints in U.S. Municipalities” by Malcolm D. Holmes from the University of Wyoming, uses the conflict theory to explain why officers go after minorities sometimes causing police brutality. It explains the police’s tension with African American and Latino males. Those minorities are the ones that retaliate more against police officers which causes the officer to use violent force to defend themselves.
Shelden, R. G. (1999). The Prison Industrial Complex. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from www.populist.com: http://www.populist.com/99.11.prison.html
However, the corporations that focus their business in the prison system could not look overseas for cheap labor. Furthermore, to make it more complicated for corporations in the United States it is hard to find cheap labor because of the several regulations that protect employees, including the minimum wage law, which sets a different amount of money to be paid depending on the state as the minimum remuneration that an individual must perceive for their work. Nevertheless, corporations have found the way to benefit from the prison system and are taking advantage of it. In his journal, U$ Prisons Means Money, Hartman Andrew describes, “the criminal justice system is now supplying the United States with cheap labor” where prisoners get paid half of the minimum wage, and the other half goes for the system itself where many laborer laws do not apply to the prisoners, including health care, pay leave act, and OSHA. In other words, prisoners are not allowing to complain at all about the working conditions (American Humanist