The film 13th was documentary that explains mass incarceration, Jim Crow, and slavery as being the same forms. Through use of statistic, testimonies, and stories, the documentary portrays a message of what is and has been going on and has a call to action. The film starts off with explaining how there is a loophole a clause of the 13th amendment that makes it unconstitutional for anyone to be a slave except criminals, and ever since that loophole was discovered there was a mass of African Americans arrested. Although the film was able to show evidence for the parallels between slavery, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration, it did not provide solutions for this problem.
The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their
“there were in 2005 some 9 million prisoners in the world, more than two were being held in the United States.” More prisoners are in the United States, some have committed big crimes and some were locked for committing violent. The author describes that more black man are on prisons, some are high school dropouts and some are just working men. The author considers this issue as more than technical issue. The author connects the Nation of Jailers as his personal issue.
The film has a strong connection with Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow”. Where she explains how we as individuals may think we know how the system works. We only know so little based on what these media outlets say. That it is more than just that. Those who are on the inside know how these facilities operate.
For example in the story in source two it stated "while incarceration renders many unable to find gainful employment upon release, consigning them to underground economics where disputes are resolved by violence. This shows that when people get out of jail, they are unable to get a job so they go back to jail. The government should do a sentencing reform to help people get jobs who have been in jail. This will decrease the jail population. Another example that is stated in the text in source two is "we should heed the call of black lives matter and other voices for change that connect criminal law reform to broader social and fiscal policy reforms to reforms that would reduce violence by revitalizing our communities, providing employment to disaffected youth, funding drug treatment and quality health care, investing in education and shelter fit for human beings, and ending our shameful practices of mass incarceration".
The Abolitionists Growing up as a Christian I never could understand how people claimed to be saved or god’s servant but yet can discriminate against skin color. I was taught God is of love regardless of skin color, size or how the person looks. Such as Caucasians with African Americans and even so how could they attend church but yet have slave servants in their home? As shown in the documentary most of the film was a conflict about slavery and the few whites that was against it. Such as “Angelina Grimké” a Caucasians female Christian who despised slavery and watch her parents live with it with no moral or self-respected.
The justice system in the United States of America is not fair. Michelle Alexander writes a great article “Locked Up In America” describing how people gets into the justice system and how their life is when coming out of jail. People that are convicted of any crime they are labeled as criminals and felons. Criminals does not get properly punished for their crimes if they did they wouldn’t be so many people going in and out of jail. The justice system should have different ways of punishing a person according to the crime they commit, just by putting them in jail and assuming that is going to change them is not a good way of going about that.
The impacts that institutions can have on us can either be negative or positive, although the individual must want to change in order to gain a positive outcome. The film The Shawshank Redemption directed by Frank Darabont portrays a negative aspect towards the inmates. This detention
Developing A Connection The Verdict In The Verdict, (1974) Sidney Lumet directed Paul Newman’s portrayal of Frank Galvin, an alcoholic lawyer hoping to get his life and his career back on track. An old friend gives Frank a lead on a medical malpractice case. Frank talks with relatives of the victim and makes notes about how much money he might make.
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
In “Turning off the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Henry Wilson notes that the zero-tolerance policy has become a significant contributor to the raised number of young individuals being marked as a failure and eventually lead up to belonging in the justice system. Schools have become one of the biggest contributors to the raised number of young individuals being sent to prison in America. “Prisons spawn a new generation of future prisoners: there are more than two million children with at least one incarcerated parent, and these youth are five times more likely to end up in prison themselves” (49). Due to the 80’s and 90’s increased crime rate, people began to fear those in urban areas leading to the increased penalties for juvenile offenders.
On my way back to Miami, waiting for my flight at La Guardia Airport in New York and was eager to board my plane, I decided to watch the nearby television to pass time. That’s when I learned about who Michael Brown was. He was an unarmed black teenager, shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. On the TV screen were countless vivid images of the scene of Brown’s death and almost instantly it became ground zero for local outrage. Devastated to hear that yet another another teenage boy was killed by law enforcement, it was clear to me that there was an urgent need for justice in the US.
In America, 2.3 million people are in prison. American has the highest prison population in the world. This is due to “tough on crime laws” that have been enforced since the 1960’s. Although these laws do help keep crime off the street, they have done more harm than good for our country. Mass incarceration is a major issues in America, it leads to poverty, broken families, money wasted, and many other problems.
In the film 12 Years a Slave the editor, Joe Walker, makes use of a couple of techniques and styles that adds to the film in its own way. Long shots – Joe kept the long shots as long as he thought was necessary to add to the subject matter and the feeling he wanted to bind with the story. At the end of the film there’s this extremely long shot where Solomon is practically staring at the camera for about a minute and a half. The timing of that shot is so perfect because it’s not too short so you don’t have enough time to think about what just happened or too much time to overthink the situation. Closer to the end of the shot he lets the sound fade slowly and rapidly gives you a wakeup call when the next shot starts off where Solomon and the rest of the slaves are busy working in the field.
Within this quote we see that in St. Clair prison, inmates get raped and stabbed. These are reasons why prisons should be reformed. Prisoners shouldn’t be hurt for whatsoever problems. Conversely, Penal Reform International article suggested different reasons to reform prisons one that stood out to reform the particular prison in Alabama was this, Provide a healthy, safe environment. “Spaces that are filled with sunlight, outside views, therapeutic color schemes and normalized materials, encourage inmates’ participation, reduce stress, incidents and assaults and decrease staff absenteeism.”
