Let's take a look at the statistics. The United States has
5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Think about this. A small country with 5 percent of the world's population has 25 percent of the world's prisoners? 1 out of 4? 1 out of 4 people imprisoned and bound, in the world, are imprisoned here, in the land of the free. NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARIES The number of prisoners in 1972, was 200,000. Today, the prison population is 2.3 million. The United States has the
highest incarceration rate in the world. Suddenly people woke up and started saying, "Maybe we should downsize our prison system. It's getting too expensive and
out of control." But the very people
who often express concern about the cost and breadth of the system are often unwilling
to take any serious action to correct the damage that has been done.
History is not just random events. We are the product of the history our ancestors chose,
if we are white. And if we are black, we are products of history
that our ancestors did not choose. Yet here we are, the
product of that set of choices. We must understand that in order to escape from it. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution constitutionally prohibits slavery. "Abolition of slavery," in other words, gives freedom… to all Americans. The amendment excludes some categories
, including criminals. There is a clause, a legal loophole. “Except as a punishment for committing a crime.” If you add that within the structure of the law, in constitutional language, it can be used as a tool
to carry out any goal one desires. People should remember that slavery was an economic system. The collapse of slavery at the end of the Civil War left the southern economy in poor shape. This raises an important question. There are 4 million people who were once slaves and were previously an integral part of the economic production system in the south. And now these people are free.
So, what do we do with these people? How do we rebuild the economy? The legal loophole
in the 13th Constitutional Amendment was immediately exploited. After the Civil War,
African Americans were incarcerated en masse..