CJC 101 - Final Exam Film Characters/Terms

13th (documentary)

argues that the U.S. abolished slavery in name but preserved it through the criminal justice system, using the 13th Amendment’s loophole to justify mass incarceration of Black Americans

13th Amendment

bans slavery “except as punishment for a crime”; created a legal pathway for forced labor and racial control to continue after the Civil War

Barack Obama

opened film saying “the United States holds 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners”

Bill Clinton

his administration was a major driver of mass incarceration through policies like the 1994 Crime Bill and “three‑strikes” laws, which disproportionately harmed Black communities

Bryan Stevenson

founder of EJI; traces how slavery, convict leasing, Jim Crow, the War on Drugs, and mass incarceration all control Black bodies through criminalization

Civil Rights Movement

critical turning point in the long continuum of racial control in the United States — but also as a moment whose gains were quickly met with new forms of backlash that fed directly into mass incarceration

Convict Leasing

The Civil Rights Movement disrupted the racial hierarchy, and the criminal justice system became the new tool to re‑establish it → convicting Black people in order to force them back into slavery (officially labor)

Donald Trump

patterns the film traces across 150 years are still active today; latest example of political messaging to shape public opinion; rhetoric still shapes public attitudes about crime and race

Jim Crow

the second major system of racial control in the United States — the bridge between slavery/convict leasing and modern mass incarceration

Michelle Alexander

author of New Jim Crow

New Jim Crow

mass incarceration functions as a new racial caste system

Racial Caste

a modern system of racial hierarchy that replaces older systems like slavery and Jim Crow

Richard Nixon

the political figure who initiated the modern era of mass incarceration through the creation of “law and order” politics and the early stages of the War on Drugs; when criminalization became a deliberate political strategy

Ronald Reagan

the president who supercharged the systems Richard Nixon began—turning coded racial politics into full‑scale federal policy through the escalation of the War on Drugs; mass incarceration shifted from political strategy to national infrastructure

Slavery

the origin point of America’s racial control systems — not a closed chapter, but the foundation for everything that follows

Voting Rights Act

a major civil rights victory that was later undermined, allowing new forms of racial control—especially mass incarceration and voter suppression—to take root.

War on Drugs

one of the most destructive and racially targeted policy campaigns in modern U.S. history — the engine that accelerated mass incarceration and disproportionately devastated Black communities.