Critical Analysis #5 | Isabelle Wong

We watched the "13th" Documentary by Netflix (2016) in class on 9/24 and 9/26. 

I felt discouraged, confused, sad, and stirred to action after watching this documentary. I also did feel helpless at times and inspired by the courage of those who advocate for true success. I thought that the message of the film was not ultimately hopeful, because it seemed to not have a call to action at the documentary's conclusion. I thought that the director of the documentary left it more "up in the air" for viewers to feel encouraged to see what they could do about striving for justice in terms of America's mass incarceration problem. I recognized that they were trying to go for a hopeful message at the end, but it just felt sad and discouraging to me. 

I feel like I did not know much about the prison system before watching this film. I knew that America had a mass criminalization and imprisonment issue, but I didn't know the extent of it. To find out that the US has just 5% (!!) of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners was so shocking (a statistic from Barack Obama's speech, cited in the documentary). I also didn't know how many prisoners were subject to free labor for corporations, which was another shocking highlight of the ending of the film. Watching this documentary for the first time allowed me to think about how easy it is for certain American citizens to brush this subject off when it doesn't affect us. Or how we choose to ignore this issue because it is uncomfortable to talk about. I feel like this film led me to feel like we should be talking about this more in today's political climate and allowing it to be a "main" topic like immigration, economics, abortion, and geopolitical relations because it directly affects so many Americans and American families. 

An issue related to race and the criminal justice system is racial profiling. The textbook defines racial profiling as the "use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspicion" and how in the US, there is convincing evidence of it (pg. 352). It describes how in the early 1990s, statistician John Lamberth (1994) conducted a detailed study that found that only 13% of all cars on the NJ Turnpike had a Black driver or passenger, but that 35% of those stopped were black, and 73.2% of those arrested. Even if black and white drivers violated traffic laws at almost the same rate, black people were more likely than white people to be stopped. 

The idea of "individual responsibility" clashes with the argument that racial disparities are systemic because systemic racial disparities should prevent a lot of racial minorities from being able to live equally as the racial majorities in society. Individual responsibility, or personal responsibility, is taking full accountability for your actions and the way you live your life. However, the systemic racial disparities argument clashes with that because it argues that people are not able to live their lives fully when there are disparities that are preventing certain groups of people from succeeding and thriving in the same way as others. 

Some commonly held misconceptions about criminal justice are that black people are lazy and like committing crimes or that the US judicial system is fair and doesn't need to be changed. I know people who think that black Americans are mostly imprisoned or face racial persecution because "they do things to deserve it" or that they commit crimes and this is their punishment. I know some people who think that the US judicial system is fair and doesn't need to be changed, but I feel as if many on both sides of the political spectrum would agree that there needs to be reform in helping Americans receive the justice they deserve. 

Mass criminalization has a deep impact on individuals and families. We know how important parental involvement is in child development, but children are not able to see either their mother or father if she or he is imprisoned. It's hard for children to have a stable relationship and family life if their parent(s) are in and out of jail. This also contributes to the (broken) foster care system and how there are many children who are neglected by their parents. Intersectionality is also relevant because gender is an important part of figuring out criminal justice. There are many stories of how women get sexually assaulted or raped in these prisons, or how there is a lot of hurt involved in many of the stories from the formerly imprisoned women. The textbook mentioned that nearly 80% of female prisoners had experienced some form of abuse in their lives, and many were serving time for retaliating against their abusers. Imprisonment affects people's lives. Even a 24-hour stint in jail is enough to change a family's life for the rest of their lives. So, we should be aware of this in our efforts to achieve criminal justice reform. 

Some possible solutions to this issue would be talking to lawmakers and representatives about how we can create laws and changes that would benefit Americans as a whole. We can lobby on social media and have a call to action that informs/educates those who don't know about what is happening. We can vote for representatives who promise to vote for these changes, and we can encourage those in our lives to join protests or sign petitions as well. Change can start with just one person and grow. And because of that, we should remain hopeful of the change that is to come with our efforts.