Oh, and – CCA is one of the corporations that helped ALEC write the immigration law. This kept CCA prisons overflowing with immigrant detainees. They also are responsible for SB 1070, which gave the police the right to stop anyone they thought to be an immigrant. The council writes laws for the Republican Party, including Florida’s “Stand your Ground” law. This private club is made up of people who are both politicians and members of corporations. One of the things that the documentary explains is ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council.Clinton now realizes that this bill led to hyper-incarceration and was a mistake. It basically led to the massive expansion of the prison system – it increased state funding for prisons, put 100,000 police officers on the street, and contributed to the exploding prison population. The 1994 Federal Crime Bill, created under Bill Clinton, deployed the latest technology and tactics to make communities safer.The Nixon and Reagan administrations are responsible for the cycle of criminalizing African-Americans suffering from drug addictions, rather than increasing resources for treatment or rehabilitation. In the Reagan era, the war on drugs became a part of our modern culture, andBblack people became overrepresented in the news as criminals. Nixon was the first to coin the term “war on drugs,” but Reagan was the first to turn the term into a literal war.The strategy can be summarized by this quote by Lee Atwater, “…you’re talking about cutting taxes and all of these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and the by-product of them is Blacks get hurt worse than whites.” It starts with Nixon’s southern strategy – he recruits southern, poor, working-class whites into the Republican fold and criminalizes Blacks. The film examines the effect of the various presidencies on criminalization.The film is widely known for being a catalyst to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Following the civil war and the turn of the twentieth century, the film, ‘Birth of a Nation’ portrayed the African-American male as violent, animal-like, and evil.To break it down even further, African-American men have a significantly higher percentage of lifetime likelihood of imprisonment – one in 17 white males will do prison time, compared to only one in three African-American males.Clearly, incarceration is not just a trend – it’s become a part of American culture. In 1970, the prison population was 357,292. The documentary starts off with some striking statistics – the United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but has 25% of the world’s prisoners.
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