The United States accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. In 2014, more than 2 million people were incarcerated in the United States—of those, 40 percent were African-American men. According to the Sentencing Project, African-American males born today have a one-in-three chance of going to prison in their lifetimes if incarceration trends continue.
Ava DuVernay talking:
13th is the jumping-off point for a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation, that gives you a tour through the history of racism, oppression and subjugation in this country of black people as it relates to the criminal justice system. 13th is speaking about the 13th Amendment, specifically the criminality clause, which states that slavery is abolished in this country, except if we decide that you’re a criminal.
We take you from 1865 and the abolition of slavery and the enactment of the 13th Amendment all the way to now and this Black Lives Matter movement. And we trace, decade by decade, generation by generation, politician by politician, president by president, each decision and how it has led to this moment. And we try to give, you know, gosh, some historical context to what is happening now. And I think people get in this present moment, and they start to forget that we’re a part of a legacy. And this legacy is rich, but it’s also very violent. And so, we try to kind of get into the deep layers in this film.
Malkia Cyril talking:
My biggest hope is that people understand two things. One, that slavery has already been amended once; let’s not do it again. As we get all this technology pouring into the hands of police officers—electronic monitoring, aerial surveillance over Baltimore—it’s critical that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and turn our communities into open-air prisons, even as we decarcerate the facilities themselves. So that’s the biggest thing that I hope people walk away with.
And, two, I want people to walk away with the knowledge that, you know, this country was built on the bones, the work, the labor, the lives of black bodies. It continues to profit from that exploited labor. And we continue to profit from this system, that we call white supremacy, that we don’t want to accept or acknowledge. And that system is going to come to—excuse me, that system is going to come to an end.
Kevin Gannon talking:
we like to look at the 13 Amendment as something that ended slavery. You know, the Civil War ended slavery. That’s our mythology. But, of course, it doesn’t. You know, slavery persists. And slavery is a state of profound unfreedom, of not being an autonomous individual, of being owned and subjugated under another. So, the clause in the 13th Amendment that says, you know, except in the cases of criminal, you know, incarceration, that’s the lever.
the 13th Amendment says neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall be permitted, so it becomes unconstitutional, but there is that dependent clause in there: except in the cases of having committed a crime. And so, here is this lever now to basically carry forward slavery under a different guise. You know, slaves have prison uniforms now. And so the convict labor gangs of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, that’s not a coincidental, that’s not a novel invention. If you look at immediately after the Civil War, the ex-Confederate states passed laws called Black Codes that basically criminalize an entire range of behavior. You could be in prison for a year if you were arrested for vagrancy, and “vagrancy” was defined so broadly—I mean, things like walking down the street and looking impudently at somebody, not being able to produce your labor contract for the plantation that you were working for. You know, so this was mass criminalization of blackness. It was an attempt to retain as much of slavery as possible without the name of slavery.
that’s the structure that’s built. You know, it continues upon the structures of inequality built before the Civil War. It maintains the racial caste system that the United States was built on, as Malkia said, and continues to profit from. And as long as African Americans and people of color are seen as the other, as dehumanized, as outside of civil society, that’s where we get to today. And it’s just different iterations built upon that same structural outlook.
Lisa Graves talking:
this film is a magnificent, incredible meditation about race and crime in America, and it really tells new stories. One of the stories it tells is about how that amendment, where it says that you can’t be enslaved or you can’t be put in involuntary servitude unless you’re convicted of a crime, except as punishment, has really manifested in the 21st century and the 20th century through a lot of criminal justice policies.
And one of the things that Ava DuVernay brilliantly shows is the role of corporations in joining in this effort, this very racialized criminal justice system, how corporations, through ALEC, have helped advance their own bottom line. And one of the things that she helps document is the role of the Corrections Corporation of America within ALEC. It was a member of ALEC for a number of years, as we’ve written about. It was the chair of ALEC’s crime task force for a number of years, and ultimately it left ALEC after it was disclosed that CCA was in the room when corporations were voting on the SB 1070 legislation in Arizona that would have put—that was designed to put more immigrants in detention facilities and jails for immigrants. And CCA is just one of the many corporations that has been part of ALEC as it has pushed forward both for privatization of prisons, as well as measures to make people go to jail for longer—longer sentences.
One of the things we discovered when we launched ALEC Exposed was that it wasn’t just that corporations were lobbying these members, they were actually voting as equals with politicians at these ALEC task force meetings. So, what happens is, corporations help fund scholarships for legislators to go on these fancy trips. Then they’re wined and dined on these trips. And then, at ALEC task force meetings, like on criminal justice, the corporations actually vote as equals with politicians on these bills. These bills are written by corporate lobbyists. They’re designed to advance the corporate interests. And in the criminal justice arena, we can certainly see the effect of that.
Now, CCA claims it never voted on those bills. You know, it was certainly there when those bills moved forward that helped it privatize prisons, helped make it easier for people to be put into employment circumstances in prisons—that Ava documents, as well—and also, a number of bills—three strikes, you’re out; truth in sentencing; mandatory minimums—numerous bills to put more people in jail, put them in jail for longer, which all increase the profits of corporations that fund ALEC, like CCA.
the American Bail Coalition is a trade group that basically has documented itself—it has praised ALEC to its members, saying that it really helped put ABC on the map. What ABC has done has—is work for the privatization of bail in this country, which has increased profits for bail bondsmen, bail bondswomen, bail bond services, and it’s done so for people who are accused of crimes, not yet convicted.
One of the things that happened after we connected the dots on the Stand Your Ground law in Florida and how it was pushed by ALEC into law in states after—state after state, after a bunch of corporations left ALEC, but one of the ones that remained was this trade group, ABC. That’s because they want a piece of the pie for people who are released from jail. This is ALEC’s effort to basically profitize every element of the criminal justice system. And ABC stands to benefit from that.
the Kochs are really one of the largest funders of ALEC. Koch Industries is a major funder of ALEC. Koch Industries has had a seat on ALEC’s board as it moved forward with all these bills to privatize prisons, as it moved forward bills to put people in jail and put them in jail—more people in jail, more people in jail for longer. But also, ALEC and the Kochs have been working together on their so-called Right on Crime initiative, which is part of this criminal justice reform. But what people don’t realize is that within that reform package are measures to make it easier for corporations to get away, get out of jail free. So it would change the criminal intent standards, if they’re successful, to make it easier for corporations to commit crimes and get away with it.
it’s certainly good that they’re embracing that now. But what they have not done—what they have not done is acknowledge their role. Koch Industries has been a leader of ALEC. It was the board—it was the board chair for ALEC’s corporate board. Koch Industries presided over the whole expansion of the criminal justice system at the state level through ALEC. And now it wants to pretend, in essence, that it wasn’t part of that effort, that it wasn’t a leader of ALEC during those measures. And so, where there is consensus for reform, I think that should move forward, but where Koch is trying to change the law to make it easier to limit accountability for financial crimes, for environmental crimes and other crimes that corporations might commit, I think those provisions should be dropped. They haven’t been honest about that. And the Kochs are engaged in a massive PR campaign to try to burnish their reputation in the face of rightful and proper criticism from people about their undue influence on our entire democracy.
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Ava DuVernay
director of 13th. With her previous film, Selma, DuVernay became the first African-American female director to have a film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
Kevin Gannon
professor of history at Grand View University.
Malkia Cyril
co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice.
Lisa Graves
executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, and publisher of PRWatch.org and ExposedByCMD.org.
— source democracynow.org