Ava DuVernay's documentary titled “13th” refers to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Section 1 of the amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and accepted by the states on December 6, 1865, states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime which part will have been duly punished. convicted, will exist in the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction. Ms. DuVernay's examination and focus in her documentary was on issues of imprisonment in the United States. His documentary particularly focused on the United States having the highest incarceration rate and America accounting for five percent of the world's population but twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners. He focused on the history of racial inequality, mistreatment, criminalization, and the unequal majority of incarcerated people being people of the African American population and provided statistics showing that African- Americans made up 6.5 percent of the U.S. population and 40 percent of the U.S. population. the prison population. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay forcing anyone into slavery was ratified. Although the 13th Amendment was intended to ensure that involuntary servitude and slavery were prohibited, one part created a major loophole, an exception to this law. This part was in the first section of the amendment and read: "except as punishment for crime of which the party shall have been duly convicted." In the simplest form of understanding, this essentially meant that slavery was illegal except as punishment for a crime. The creation and preparatory work for Ms. Duvernay's 13th documentary were born from this gap. Profit is the driving force behind slavery, and when slavery was abolished, the South found itself short of four million slaves. The outcome of this affair led Southerners to find new ways to balance economic growth. They began arresting African Americans and putting them in jail for petty reasons like loitering. African Americans were also known as “super predators.” This term presented a view of African American men virtually as uncontrollable animals and a threat to white people, white women to be more precise. After being arrested, they were then used and placed as laborers for free work for private parties. The documentary provided statistics that one in three African Americans would go to prison in their lifetime, while one in seventeen white Americans would go to prison. This fact demonstrates how racism was and still is a persistent factor and how discriminatory our criminal justice system still is. Duvernay's documentary gives us a compelling perspective on how today's prisons and labor systems are comparable to slavery and how its practices still exist in today's society today with mass incarceration. Prisons allow private companies to make millions using prisoners' free labor for profit. These societies depend on mass incarceration and incarcerating as many individuals as possible. One example the film discusses is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which brought together politicians and businesses and created controversial immigration bills and passed laws allowing for higher detention rates ...