13th: History Of Mass Incarceration
Jocelyn Serrano
Art 118L
10/28/16
Assignment 3 Ava DuVernay’s film “The 13th” showed the history of mass incarceration, especially Black criminalization. She got the title from the 13th amendment from the Constitution that freed the slaves and stopped servitude except for those who committed criminal offenses. She explained how America has used this loophole in order to exploit it and jail as many people as they could. After the Civil War there was a huge shortage of labor so in order to basically get that free labor (slavery) back, they went on arresting mass amounts of Black people for minor crimes such as loitering. This film showed the cause and ramifications of Black criminalization in a time period format the same way that Christianson …show more content…
This further allowed for people to have further feelings about black people because they were the main suspects “But as the racial order continues to invent new ways to target blacks, it has generated punitive policies and practices that diffuse to other groups in the United States, including immigrants, impoverished whites, and people charged with sex offenses.” (Gottschalk 33) Prisons are mostly Black and Hispanic for these reasons and they are just being exploited in the system due to their race. The mandatory minimum controls the judges in giving them long sentences which makes small offenses seem like big ones. ALECS makes lots of benefits from increasing rates on things such as phone calls, commissary, and profits from Walmart’s gun department because people are in fear due to what they are being informed. Companies are using them as cheap labor to make their goods as well. This leads to current events of police brutality such as Trayvon Martin who received no justice because Zimmerman was able to plead for self-defense while those who are accused are given absurd bails so they rather take the plead and serve the time. This refers to the film “The Prison in 12 Landscapes” because it showed the Black Lives Matter protests where people were fighting police brutality; there were also multiple occasions in the film where people got sentences such as the woman who got 15 days for not putting her trashcan lid on correctly. This just shows how the justice system is trying to make every penny that they can get. As Gordon said it is “…notable in the U.S. history of mass imprisonment as a modality of social control and socioeconomic governance.” It is their way of distorting knowledge which Giorgi also mentions because they aren’t counted into the data and are basically excluded like they have always been. The second thesis is about how
Art 118L
10/28/16
Assignment 3 Ava DuVernay’s film “The 13th” showed the history of mass incarceration, especially Black criminalization. She got the title from the 13th amendment from the Constitution that freed the slaves and stopped servitude except for those who committed criminal offenses. She explained how America has used this loophole in order to exploit it and jail as many people as they could. After the Civil War there was a huge shortage of labor so in order to basically get that free labor (slavery) back, they went on arresting mass amounts of Black people for minor crimes such as loitering. This film showed the cause and ramifications of Black criminalization in a time period format the same way that Christianson …show more content…
This further allowed for people to have further feelings about black people because they were the main suspects “But as the racial order continues to invent new ways to target blacks, it has generated punitive policies and practices that diffuse to other groups in the United States, including immigrants, impoverished whites, and people charged with sex offenses.” (Gottschalk 33) Prisons are mostly Black and Hispanic for these reasons and they are just being exploited in the system due to their race. The mandatory minimum controls the judges in giving them long sentences which makes small offenses seem like big ones. ALECS makes lots of benefits from increasing rates on things such as phone calls, commissary, and profits from Walmart’s gun department because people are in fear due to what they are being informed. Companies are using them as cheap labor to make their goods as well. This leads to current events of police brutality such as Trayvon Martin who received no justice because Zimmerman was able to plead for self-defense while those who are accused are given absurd bails so they rather take the plead and serve the time. This refers to the film “The Prison in 12 Landscapes” because it showed the Black Lives Matter protests where people were fighting police brutality; there were also multiple occasions in the film where people got sentences such as the woman who got 15 days for not putting her trashcan lid on correctly. This just shows how the justice system is trying to make every penny that they can get. As Gordon said it is “…notable in the U.S. history of mass imprisonment as a modality of social control and socioeconomic governance.” It is their way of distorting knowledge which Giorgi also mentions because they aren’t counted into the data and are basically excluded like they have always been. The second thesis is about how