MOVIE · 2016
13th
CrimeDocumentary100 min
Ava DuVernay traces the line from the 13th Amendment’s exception clause to modern mass incarceration, arguing that the U.S. prison system is inseparable from the country’s history of racial control. Through archival footage, news clips, and interviews, voices including scholar Michelle Alexander and activist Angela Davis connect slavery, Jim Crow, the war on drugs, and bipartisan crime policy to the prison boom. Politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated people appear alongside media images and statistics as the film maps how race, punishment, and power have shaped American life.
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