Op-Ed Student Blog 2 Beau Bichler

 The 13th paints an overwhelmingly grim picture of the American justice system and the ways in which it operates to furnish American business interests with an exploitable underclass. The film roots the prison industrial complex firmly in the context of American history, and the inexorable ties it shares with white supremacy. The documentary begins with detailing the way institutional white supremacy transitioned after the abolition of slavery, to a more covert cultural force that obfuscated its motives behind the rule of law. The 13th amendment holds slavery to be illegal unless the person has been tried and duly convicted of a crime. This was subsequently used as a legal loophole by rich white business owners to get incredibly cheap labor from prisons. The documentary details how a cultural conception of black men as inherently violent and threatening gave the rich southern class a moral underpinning for incarcerating them en masse. Through this connection the documentary portrays the US political institution as at least complicit in the continuity of slavery from before abolition to its less visible, yet no less insidious form that it exists in today. The constitution exists with slavery enshrined within its thirteenth amendment, as long as that person doing the labor is convicted as a criminal. This paired with the high incarceration of black men and their negative overrepresentation in media create both an incentive for police to arrest them and for judges to look more harshly on their cases, as well as an excuse for this bias. 

The film changed my understanding of the prison system greatly. The prison system claims to be concerned with rehabilitating its prisons, but the reality of prisons in the United States is one of retribution, not rehabilitation. One of the interviewees in the documentary describes prison as “A system designed to break a person down in their first hundred days”. The US justice system's preference for retributive justice makes it that much easier for those caught up in this system to be dehumanized and largely forgotten about by those on the outside. The prison industrial complex counts on this ignorance to be able to exploit the prisoners on the inside. Working full shifts for fractions of a livable wage, unable to leave the confines of the prison, and perpetually under the watch of often brutal armed guards. It is clear the comparison that the documentary seeks to draw. This whole system is eerily similar to the way slavery used to operate. The documentary portrays slavery as the natural predecessor to the way prison labor operates. Taking the harsh treatment of prisoners and their being forced to work with the demographics of most prisons, it is clear that the victims of the system today are from the same places as they were before abolition. The documentary seeks to alter its audiences perceptions about the criminal justice system in America, and it definitely did that for me. I think most people are aware of the injustices perpetrated by police on some level, but the documentary shows the whole picture. A massive interconnected web of capital incentives and prejudices hundreds of years old, that so often traps this nation's most vulnerable citizens. 

The evidence employed by the documentary that struck me the most was how intertwined this injustice is with American history. The continued operation of the prison industrial complex is dependent on the racial bigotries that have plagued the US since its earliest beginnings. The idea that race determined certain genetic characteristics, desirable and undesirable, came into popularity at the same time as the enlightenment ideals that led to the founding of this country. The entire base of the United States agricultural economy was predicated on this idea that nonwhite races were lesser, and could thus be exploited for their labor. When slavery was abolished this superiority morphed into a fear of this newly free class of people. This fear of retribution, either for the evil of slavery or its abolition, was exploited by southern elites to more effectively make black people appear fundamentally different. These business owners reaped the benefits of this country's hatred in much the same way they had before slavery was abolished, and the same way they do to this very day. This realization can be disheartening. After all, its easy to get the impression that this is not a fight that can be won. Governments and administrations change but greed and bare capital gains are eternal forces behind some of the most harmful aspects of living in this country. In my mind, though, there exists another way of viewing it. The problem today is much the same as it was, and greed has not always prevailed. The prison system was not always used for this purpose. There is, I must hope, a need in us as Americans to see the humanity in people. We believe they can change. It is possible to get our prison system to reflect that, as soon as incarcerating people stops being profitable.