“They called the end of slavery ‘jubilee,’ ” says Jones, immediately after a bracing montage that juxtaposes archival footage of black civil rights activists being pushed around by whites with cellphone videos of violence directed at minority protesters at Donald Trump rallies. It is a documentary about the weighty topic of mass incarceration. He continues: “We thought we were done then, and then you had 100 years of Jim Crow, terror, and lynching. 0000001769 00000 n Give modern-day examples. From the “convict leasing” of former slaves after 1865, to the criminalization of civil rights activism in the 1960s, to the craven politicking that used images of black criminality to win elections in the 1970s and ’80s, the story of how we got to our present moment is devastating in its coherence. • Were you surprised to know about ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council—a committee of politicians and corporations influencing laws that benefit its corporate founders and pushing forth policies to increase the number of people in prison and increase sentences)? As convincing as the film is in tracing the national pathology that connects slavery and mass incarceration, as effective as it is in forcing its viewers to reckon with the cruelty of the prison system, it left me, in the end, with the queasy guilt of a helpless bystander—someone who doesn’t want to tolerate the imprisonment of 2 million people but has no idea what that means in practice. 0000003355 00000 n 34 0 obj <> endobj xref 34 31 0000000016 00000 n After it ended, I thought about how much I’d gotten used to in just under two years of covering the criminal justice system for Slate—how thoroughly I have absorbed the unfathomable scale of the country’s prison crisis, and how normal it now seems to me that we tolerate a state of affairs that should be intolerable. 0000008801 00000 n So, we don’t know what the next iteration of this will be. While turning these questions over in my head, I came across a recent interview with Michelle Alexander, a radical leader in the world of criminal justice reform and as close to a star as 13th can be said to have. Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. 0000001189 00000 n Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. That clause, which converts slavery from a legal business model to an equally legal method of punishment for criminals, is the subject of the Netflix documentary “13th.” You can cancel anytime. ( Log Out /  That’s what a film like 13th is for: It makes us gasp and not stop gasping. 0000023499 00000 n List three ways this documentary has impacted you. How did they not wake up every morning, nauseated and panicked about what was happening? In the years prior to the release of 13TH, with the help of the Black Lives Matter movement and social media, there was significant rise in awareness around the amount of prejudice African Americans continue to face in the 21st century. 0000003466 00000 n 0000009803 00000 n Ava DuVernay’s new documentary about mass incarceration made me feel ashamed. 0000003242 00000 n But that is not really true. Still from 13th.. Screenshot via IMDB. 0000000916 00000 n Ava DuVernay’s new documentary about mass incarceration made me feel ashamed. When the 13 th amendment was ratified in 1865, its drafters left themselves a large, very exploitable loophole in the guise of an easily missed clause in its definition. In its sweeping treatment of the history of American racism, the film brought me closer than I’ve ever been to understanding how it could be that so many people could have ever grown used to the moral catastrophes that were slavery and Jim Crow. • Talk about CCA (Corrections Corporations of America, leader in private prisons that is required to keep prison beds filled—the leading corporation responsible for the rapid increase in criminalization) and how that impacts our communities. In the span of about 40 minutes, the film throws its attention at the absurd cost of prison phone calls, the cynicism of the plea bargaining system, the sleaze of corporations that take advantage of prison labor, and the brazen unconstitutionality of cash bail. As long as these people know that breaking the rules will trigger swift and certain consequences, the argument went, they’ll be able to pay their debt to society under conditions that won’t upend their lives or expose them to the destructive horrors of the prison system. 0000036459 00000 n It struck me as a promising proposal, especially after one of its proponents, then–University of California, Los Angeles professor Mark Kleiman, noted that it could be paid for with money that would otherwise be spent providing prisoners with room and board. In the weeks and months that followed, I remember rolling my eyes whenever I heard activists and academics in the latter camp make the point that incremental reforms of the sort Kleiman had in mind—tweaks to the system that they saw as reinforcing the basic structure of the carceral state instead of challenging it at its foundation—were the enemy of real progress.