Go ahead, lean on your local judges to let murderers and rapists off with a warning. If you think judges should sentence criminals based not on what they’ve been convicted of, but based on international incarceration disparities, fine. Equating Donald Trump supporters with Deep South lynch mobs isn’t even its most outlandish tactic.ĭuVernay, the director of “Selma,” begins the film with a much-discussed but irrelevant statistic: The US, home to 5 percent of the world’s population, is also home to (nearly) 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.Īnyone who has ever thought about this imbalance, which tends to get trotted out in campaign seasons, will quickly understand the reason why: The US has a lot more crime than other countries. Instantly acclaimed as one of the most important documentaries of the year, Ava DuVernay’s film about the mass incarceration of black men, “13th,” wowed audiences at the New York Film Festival and looks like a leading Oscar contender as it premieres in theaters and on Netflix on Friday.ĭisappointingly, given the importance of the underlying issues, the film is a morass of distortions, half-truths, calculated omissions, absurd hyperbole and outright falsehoods.
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