Slavery. It is seen as a haunted past and that we do not have problems with it this day and age. The 13th amendment abolished slavery but did it really? The 13th amendment specifically reads as, "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, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."(Primary). This seems like it is getting rid of slavery but that middle clause is what the problem is, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” America is using this tactic and has been using this for decades on decades. During the civil rights era, the 80’s and even in 2016. African-American citizens, mostly men, are being taken to prison for lower tier offences, like small drug charges that should not be involved with the same people as killers, and being treated as slaves. Ava DuVernay created a documentary and Heather Ann Thompson has to write a book for the public to finally see this “modern day slavery” as it should be called in action. American citizens need to step up and fight back. Bring that change to legislation and make change happen for the greater good of the country and the future of this country. Minorities need representation, like the group of state officials discussing police aggression, and how the prison system is a cycle of “modern day slavery” in North Carolina. America needs to realize that there is a problem and make a difference for the people that really need it. These officials were trying to come up with new ways to keep racial tension between officers and prisoners to a complete minimum. They want to keep the prisons clean of any type of slave work but many prisons are not willing to come out and say what problems are really going on inside the prison walls.

The book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy written by Heather Thompson has revealed these racial issues through her novel. The Attica prison was a true event and Thompson was able to factual evidence into her fictional characters. The Prisoners in this facility were being racially segregated and being treated as slaves. The prisoners had enough of being treated like this and took over the prison. They took the prisoner officers hostage and made sure that they had complete control of the prison until federal officials had to come and negotiate with them and prison workers. This prison in New York had 2243 prisoners at the time, 54% of these were Black American, 9% Puerto Rican, and 37% white. (Attica Records). Of the officers, all 219 of them were white. There were instances where white officers were openly racist towards prisoners. “I never saw human beings treated like this,” another prisoner later recalled. He couldn’t understand: “Why all the hatred?” But it wasn’t just any hatred—it was racial hatred (Thompson 57). Having prisoners be exposed to this, especially in a northern state like New York, may have been very eye opening for white people whom may have not been around this behavior. Many of the prisoners had never been exposed to this racial tension in person and many of the white prisoners were shaken up. Along with this hatred they were doing slave labor, whether it be field work, cleaning, or just abuse it was and still is happening very much today. “As one prisoner was told by a trooper who had a gun trained on him: he would soon be dead because “we haven’t killed enough niggers.” (Thompson 58). The fact that this was being said in the late 20th century goes to show how little we have come as a country over time. This quote is something that should not even be something to say at this point in time and to have prison officials saying this to prisoner is even worse Everywhere there were cries of “Keep your nigger nose down! Don’t you know state troopers don’t like niggers?” (Thompson 60). Having this issue occur in our corrections facilities in the later part of the 20th century is a major problem. The minorities in Attica had enough and on September 9, 1971, they finally stood up for themselves to stop the slave work. They took over the prison and negotiated with officials to get rid of the hatred and slavery abuse they were enduring. Now this is a positive outcome of a very deadly riot, that had 33 people die, but it had a cause. Slavery would no longer be a part of Attica, which sadly the public found out later that it went back to how it used to be and now racial tension is an ongoing issue for them.

Mass Incarceration was never a problem until the late part of the 20th century. Mass Incarceration should be called, “The New Jim Crow,” which many people refer to it as that now. The Drug War has produced outstanding unequal outcomes across racial groups, created through racial discrimination by law enforcement and drug war misery suffered by communities of color. Although rates of drug use and selling are done by all people, people of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites. This is a statistic that is still relevant and might be at an all-time high because of intense racial tension in 2016 and will continue beyond. Higher arrest and incarceration rates for African Americans are not an outcome of increases in drug use or sales in these communities, but an outcome of law enforcement focus on communities of color as well as unfair treatment by the criminal justice system. We believe that the mass criminalization of people of color, particularly young African American men, is as strong as a system of racial control as the Jim Crow laws were in this country until the mid-1960s hence “The New Jim Crow.” “America has 5% of the population of the world but has 25% of all incarcerated population.” (DuVernay). Obama has been very initiative with this topic, trying to get lower-tier offenders out of this disturbing situation that he knows is prevalent in society today. The fact that America has 25% of the total incarcerated populated should strike the public more but it has not hit home yet. Only those directly involved or researchers on this topic know what is happening. There are many analytics that go into great detail on how this problem has gotten worse over the course of the last 30 years. These stats go to show how we have created a monster of a problem that is only going to get worse unless we do something that will positive help prisoners and the prisons sort everything out.

Some numbers to support this claim that researchers have found shows: African-Americans are 62 percent of drug offenders sent to state prisons, yet they represent only 12 percent of the U. S. population. Black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of White men. It is due heavily to the fact that may people have a stereotypical vision that African American men are going to be dealing, selling, or using drugs compared to any other race, specifically whites. Drug transactions among Blacks are easier for police to target because they more often happen in public than do drug transactions between whites. The big change is tragic in states where Black men are sent to federal prison on drug charges at a rate 57 times greater than white men, according to Human Rights Watch. More than 25.4 million Americans have been arrested on drug charges since 1980; about one-third of them were Black. The Black populations in state prisons are a disgrace: “In Georgia, the Black population is 29 percent, the Black prison population is 54 percent; Arkansas 16 percent -52 percent; Louisiana 33 percent-76 percent; Mississippi 36 percent-75 percent; Alabama 26 percent -65 percent; Tennessee 16 percent -63 percent; Kentucky 7 percent-36 percent; South Carolina 30 percent-69 percent; North Carolina 22 percent-64 percent; and Virginia 20 percent-68 percent” (Kain). These number are absolutely absurd when it comes to African-Americans in the prison system. Having this many minorities locked away compared to those not locked away is a sign that racism and discrimination could be considered at an all-time high since slavery was abolished in 1865. This is especially relevant in the south where African Americans have had the hardest problem of trying ot fit into a society that still looks down upon them in the year 2016. When you see absurd numbers in the southern states it is no coincidence. These southern states take their issues with racial very seriously and many police officers are not willing to listen to reason from minorities.

 Slavery is still as strong as ever because the federal government makes sure that the public is not fully aware of what is going on. In Ava Duvernay’s documentary, 13th, it goes into great depth about the failing system today. Racism is strong again due to circumstances across the country. There was a specific quote that struck the audiences and critics, “systems of oppression are durable, and they tend to reinvent themselves.” (Duvernay). History really does tend to repeat itself and having slavery relevant in our country again is as disappointing as ever. Black men in America are at being discriminated and when they are taken in by law enforcement they are treated with no human respect a la The Attica uprising. In a matter of a century African Americas went from “slaves to criminals with one amendment.” This amendment fixed a problem in society but created one that has grown into a large scale issue. 

“There are innocent men at prisons across the country. We don’t know which they are, but we do know they are there, and they are disproportionately likely to be black. In American criminal justice, “duly convicted” doesn’t always mean what we wish it to. The US has the highest incarceration to population ratio in the world and it seems as though the people being put away, specifically African Americans, are still being treated as slaves and doing slave work.” (Arnett). Along with that a lot of those offenders are drug related cases and that it was makes many people upset about the situation at whole. When there are lower level drug offenders doing the same time as murderers or rapists, that is a problem. Now if they are bigger members of drug cartel or gangs then it is different but it still is not positively affecting society having people being treated to slave work for breaking a law. When these people are released back into the real world, that is when more trouble is created and that is what the government is trying to fix. We have too many people in the prison system that can’t get out of its cycle. Now this is something that has been intriguing myself since we got this assignment and have learned about the prison system and how bad it actually is. The perspective we all have as prisons being bad are completely right but wrong. It is much worse that we can even imagine, especially to African-Americans. The treatment is actual slave work that does not justify any human rights that prison is supposed to be protecting to an extent. This is a problem in America that is not getting the exposure that it should be because the mistreatment of citizens in 2016, even if they are criminals, is not therapeutic and should not be tolerated. This topic needs to be opened up by more Americans there needs to be changes in our flawed system. 

Heather Thompson has to dig up 40 years of hidden government files to get factual information about the uprising in Attica. This is concerning in itself as the federal government has tried to hide any and all information regarding this problem. The government has to hide this information because they are trying to avoid more uprisings in America which in time will eventually cause more problems when the public figures out what is going on. Many state correctional facilities claim that the prisoners' free labor pays for their room and board, while the actual work gives them job skills to successfully seek and maintain employment upon their release. Many other states that utilize this money-making scheme, now some states pay prisoners for their labor with funds that can be used to purchase items off the prison commissary. Some prisoners work “for free” up to 12 hours a day. This is not something that h=any decent human being would be doing as their job. Something is really wrong with you if you have people doing this type of stuff even if they are prisoners. This is flat-out, modern-day slave labor and it will continue as long as society accepts that prisoners deserve less. We should claim that high-offenders should be doing more work because of horrendous crimes done but not in this manner. Prisoners are human. Prisoners deserve the same rights as people on the outside. They are more than the dregs of society and dead weight. In fact, the prisoners slave work they are doing are actually keeping the prison system functioning with no pay. Only in America will you find a prison system that treats their prisoners like they aren't worth a dime. Are prisoners really benefiting from this? Whatever way you look at it, all work and no pay is inhumane under any circumstances. And prisoners must be paid for their labor in the states. 

This is a very controversial topic that few know about. There is something that many people have said that strikes me. “Prisons are a plague on our society and we'll never be free as long as others are locked in cages. Slavery turned to Jim Crow turned to mass incarceration, a seamless transition.” (Arnett). In my opinion sending mass amount of people to jail only increases crime in the country because you are sending crazed people who have had no human rights for who knows how long while in prison. There is something wrong about locking up criminals without addressing the factors that make someone a criminal, or understanding the forces that cause a society to view certain acts as crimes. You’re not safer because prison managers lock up prisoners; you’re less safe because prison managers destroy and mangle human beings and then set them loose. Setting these humans back on to the streets of America after experience the horrors of modern day slavery is the problem. Crime will continue to rise because people are fed up. In Attica this was the case and many of the prisoners in the story were really messed up because of the treatment they were receiving. People do not deserve to be treated as animals and if they do, there should be some consequence with it happening. It has gone on for far too long without anyone getting in trouble. If corrections officers were trained to help prisoners instead of treating them like animals, America would be a much safer place. We can’t let the government keep destroying men in the system and then blaming them for the problems that we have. It will never work. The American system is extremely flawed and nothing is being done to change it and help those that are “slaves” today. 

The War on Drugs failed immensely as drug use is still very high all across the country but now we have 2,220,300 incarcerated men (USBJS), specifically 865,917 African Americans whom many of them are serving on drug charges. Having mass amounts of people in prison is causing more damage to be done, mostly on the inside of these facilities. Now some federal officials want to start up a new War on Drugs which would ultimately lead to more stop and search of minorities, leading to more racial tension. This tension will not turn out as pleasant as officials are believing is going to happen and they need a wakeup call to make the correct changes for societies well-being. More men would be taken into prisons and treated as animals which America does not seem to have a problem with. This so called war needs to be diminished and the country needs to start fresh with new initiatives to create a better environment for citizens outside the system and the prisoners. 

Throughout History slavery was a way for whites to treat minorities like they aren’t human beings. Many believed that the 13th amendment was the turning point for African-Americans but history has brought itself back to 1860. Slavery is as strong as ever in our country but no one knows about it yet. America needs to stand up for its citizens, even if they are criminals, they are still human and deserve to be treated as that while they are locked away. They are still citizens of the U.S. and should be treated with the rights the founding fathers have given them. There needs to be a solution that the public along with the federal government have to reach in the near future before our country starts to destroy itself from within.  
