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Locked Up in the Land of the Free 

Isabella Escobar 

Arizona State University   

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Locked up in the Land of the Free 

“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.”- Amendment 13 to the United States Constitution. Ratified December 6, 1865 

and passed by Congress on January 31, 1865. 154 years of a loophole. If you are unable to see 

this life-altering loophole, you must not know how to comprehend what you read. However if 

you do, then you know the word “except” was carefully and precisely put into this historic 

paragraph. Writers of this amendment created the ability for White people to continue to take 

advantage of people of color. They were able to hide the ugliness of what they did behind the 

promise of freedom.  

After the Civil War, the South was in shambles. The majority of the South’s economy 

revolved around slavery. Once it was abolished, the South needed to find a new way to boost 

their economy. They did so by exploiting the loophole in the 13th Amendment.  

African Americans were incarcerated at extremely high rates following the abolishment 

of slavery--it was the nation's first prison boom. They were arrested for petty crimes such as 

loitering or vagrancy. They were not sent to prisons. They were sent back exactly where they 

were before. However, this time things were worse.  

Before, if one of a plantation owner’s slaves got sick, they would take them to get 

medical attention. After the mass incarceration, which took place post Civil War, if a prisoner on 

the plantation got sick they were just left to die. They did this because they knew that the people 

were expendable.  
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To justify and continue the mass incarceration of African Americans, the media created a 

negative stigma around Black people. The rhetoric that was used when writing about African 

Americans and the way they were depicted in drawings was used to instill fear. They wanted 

White people to criminalize Black people in their mind. They wanted them to believe African 

Americans were always guilty. This then made it easier for police officers to arrest Black people 

at high rates and without valid reason.  

White people were told that Black people were violent, someone they shouldn’t trust, and 

someone they should be afraid of. ​The Birth of a Nation​(D.W. Griffith, 1915) added fuel to this 

fire.  

Jelani Cobb, who was interviewed for a documentary on Netflix titled ​13th​, commented 

that the movie, “was almost directly responsible for the rebirth of the Klu Klux Klan” This 

already shows the negativity and hate brought about in this movie. But wait, there’s more. This 

movie not only reiterated the idea that Black people were violent and to be afraid of, but it also 

painted Black men as animals and rapists. It brainwashed White women into believing that their 

greatest fear should be getting raped by a Black man. This movie also caused another wave of 

terrorism aimed at Black Americans.  

Bryan Stevenson, another interviewee in the documentary, said, “We had lynchings 

between reconstruction and World War II. Thousands of African Americans murdered by mobs 

under the idea that they had done something criminal.” By stating “under the idea”, Stevenson 

emphasizes that the violence and lynchings towards African Americans were once again done 

under false ideas instilled by systemic policies being placed at the time. These were just false 
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pictures being painted in the minds of White Americans to justify the fact that White business 

people needed Black bodies working in order to make money.  

We are still experiencing the effects of these actions that took place post Civil War, 

today.  

The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world's 

prisoners(Collier, 2014). It also has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. These aren’t 

just things that happen over-night or by accident. This is hundreds of years of racial disparity and 

injustice aimed at people of color. This was done with a purpose. The driving force for all of this 

comes back to money. 

Before funding the Corrections Corporation of America, a $1.8 billion private 

prison corporation now known as CoreCivic, Terrell Don Hutto ran a cotton plantation 

the size of Manhattan. There, mostly black convicts were forced to pick cotton from 

dawn to dusk for no pay. It was 1967 and the Beatles’ “All you need is love” was a hit, 

but the men in the fields sang songs with lyrics like “Old Master don’t you whip me, I’ll 

give you half a dollar.” (Bauer, 2018) 

The private prison system makes money. There is cash flow in the incarceration of 

Americans in the land of the free. This is why every system leads back there. It’s designed to 

make money off of the lives of people of color.  

Some people may argue that in those poor communities there is a high crime rate or that 

people of color aren’t the only ones getting arrested and sent to prison. However, the harsh 

reality is that people of color are unfairly subjected to the law more than a non-person of color. 
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The rate of imprisonment for Black men is eight times higher than that of White men (Harrison 

and Beck, 2003).  

Previous studies have established that members of minority groups are 

disproportionately policed (Kane, 2003; Liska and Chamlin, 1984), arrested (Holmes, 

2000; Liska and Chamlin, 1984; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, 2003), incarcerated 

(Chiricos and Crawford, 1995; Mauer, 1999; Miller, 1996; Tonry, 1995), and are 

subjected to more severe punishment (Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000; Walker, et al., 

2003; Urbina, 2003). (Ruddell, 2004) 

People of color have not been given the chance to thrive in America because the false 

narratives created about them so long ago that have lingered throughout history and created a 

stigma that has been internalized. Let’s take a look at the youth for further confirmation of this.  

Visiting prisons is a sad business. But the saddest aspect of it is seeing the young 

people, the fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-year-old boys. The Poignancy of their current 

situation is made worse as one looks at them and is able to predict their future -- now they 

are pathetic and tormented. Soon they will become the tormentors and abusers of the next 

batch of younger prisoners. After that most of them are destined to be regular inhabitants 

of the adult prisons. Amongst them will be the next generation of violent criminals who 

will end up serving long or life sentences. Their future seems mapped out for them. The 

process is inexorable. The work of the system, whether designed to punish, reform, 

rehabilitate or care, seems doomed to fail. (Stern, 1998) 

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There is a vicious cycle of the youth who go through the prison system. It is especially 

heinous for youth of color who have this future already set up for them the moment they are 

born.  

It would be amazing to say that this problem, incarceration rates of people of color, could 

be solved with some policy reform by the government but the bottom line is the government is 

the one continuing to create legislative reform that continues to keep people of color down.  

The ​Three Strike Law​ introduced by President Bill Clinton was one of those legislative 

pieces that has dramatically changed society. The bill says that once you’ve been detained 3 

times, you must serve life in prison. Life. In. Prison. No matter what three crimes you 

committed, you must serve life in prison. Bill Clinton has now renounced his support for his own 

legislation saying he didn’t intend for the result that came about. But alas, his bill cause another 

prison boom in the United States. Mostly low-income minorities were being arrested and 

detained for misdemeanors. A bill “originally” designed to put away major offenders was 

sending poor people of color to jail for life because they didn’t pay child support, or they were in 

possession of a small amount of recreational drugs. I use air quotes over the word originally 

because that is what is claimed. The truth is that the bill was written by an organization called 

ALEC made up of legislators and corporations. They created all encompassing bills that worked 

to benefit both the lawmakers as well as the corporations that were invested. Let’s rewind. 

Earlier in this paper, I used a quote that talked about the company CoreCivic. Formally known as 

the Corrections Corporation of America which is a company that owns and runs most of the 

private prisons in the U.S (and who also used to be a cotton plantation where Black convicts 

were forced to work). Guess who is a member of ALEC? Yup, you guessed it: The CCA. They 
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have a hand in shaping what the laws in this country are going to be. They directly profited off of 

President Bill Clinton signing the ​Three Strike​ bill into law. This is because more people getting 

arrested means overcrowded prisons. Thus forcing the U.S to rent out prisons from the CCA to 

accommodate for all the new detainees.  

Once in prisons run by the CCA, prisoners are forced to work for almost nothing. Making 

clothes for your favorite stores like JC Penny or Victoria’s Secret. Private Prisons are the best 

way to make money. That is why from Reagan to Bush we see a repeated theme of a push for 

more prison privatization more than any other administration in history. Contracting out private 

prisons reduces government expenditures. It also gives money to those big companies who want 

to invest in your campaign so you can sign more bills into laws that make both parties profit.  

We talked about the incarcerated youth being stuck in such a vicious cycle, but the cycle 

for dirty politics is even more ruthless. Their only goal is profit and will stop at nothing to get it.  

No matter whose lives are at stake.  

I want to end with a TED Talk I came across while completing my research. It is done by 

Bryan Stevenson, a human rights lawyer who is determined to challenge the racial discrimination 

in the social justice system of the Unites States. Throughout the presentation he talked about 

similar problems I touched on in this paper. He went on to talk about a time when he was in 

Germany giving a similar presentation, but on the death penalty.  

I was giving some lectures in Germany about the death penalty. It was fascinating 

because one of the scholars stood up after the presentation and said, "Well you know it's 

deeply troubling to hear what you're talking about." He said, "We don't have the death 

penalty in Germany. And of course, we can never have the death penalty in Germany." 
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And the room got very quiet, and this woman said, "There's no way, with our history, we 

could ever engage in the systematic killing of human beings. It would be unconscionable 

for us to, in an intentional and deliberate way, set about executing people." And I thought 

about that. What would it feel like to be living in a world where the nation state of 

Germany was executing people, especially if they were disproportionately Jewish? I 

couldn't bear it. It would be unconscionable. And yet, in this country, in the states of the 

Old South, we execute people -- where you're 11 times more likely to get the death 

penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it if 

the defendant is black and the victim is white -- in the very states where there are buried 

in the ground the bodies of people who were lynched. And yet, there is this disconnect. 

(Stevenson, 2012) 

There is no way to erase the past of the United States and it’s lasting effect on our world 

today. With that being said, we the people can stop that ugly history from plaguing the 

generations to come. Be an active member of your community. Research who is on your ballot. 

Look into what their motives are. Educate not only yourself but your friends and families on the 

repercussions of the lies ingrained into society’s mind. Come to terms with the fact that none of 

this is fake; it is all very real and something that must be talked about in order to be stopped. We 

can not claim to be the land of the free when we continue to keep our people in shackles.  

   
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Bibliography  

Collier, L. (2014). Incarceration nation. Retrieved March 17, 2019, from

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration.

Bauer, S. (2018). The True History of America's Private Prison Industry. Retrieved

February 22, 2019, from

http://time.com/5405158/the-true-history-of-americas-private-prison-industry/

DuVernay, A. (Director). (2016). ​13th​[Video file]. United States: Netflix. Retrieved

March 15, 2019.

Sellers, M. P. (1993). ​The History and Politics of Private Prisons​. Cranbury, NJ:

Associated University Presses.

Stern, V. (1998). ​A Sin Against the Future.​ Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

Ruddell, R. (2004). ​America Behind Bars Trends in Imprisonment, 1950 To 2000.​ New

York, NY: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.

Griffith, D. (Director). (1915). ​The Birth of a Nation​[Video file]. United States.

Harrison, P. M., & Beck, A. (2003). ​Criminal victimization, 2002.​ Washington, DC:

Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Stevenson, B. (Writer). (2012, March). ​We need to talk about an injustice[​ Video file].

Retrieved March 18, 2019, from

https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice