13th

Director Ava DuVernay (Selma) explores the injustice of the US prison system and what it reveals about racial inequality in America. Streaming on Netflix from October 7, 2016.

The title refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States…” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay using archival footage and testimony from an array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men.

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