A Critical Criminological Analysis of the Series "When they See us" and Some Considerations about the Institutional Racism

Abstract

This work critically analyzes the series "When they see us", based on real facts, made available on the Netflix digital platform. This series was chosen for, to a certain extent, breaking with a white, male and heterosexual hegemony reproduced in the series main on crime. The series features the creator and director of the series Ava DuVernay, a black woman. The question to be answered by the work will be: how does the series When they see us articulate as racial and gender categories in the illegal imprisonment of the five black adolescents? It starts from the theoretical framework of critical criminology, with racial, class, sex and gender cuts. The technique used will be deductive, with the exploratory methodology of bibliography. The analysis carried out points to a central fact: the racist selectivity of the American prison system. The series managed to portray the current reality of the penal system, both in the US and in Brazil, and apply how it was strategically planned for the control of black bodies. In addition to the selectivity of the system, the series depicts the inhumane way that people deprived of their liberty are subjected, and also how gender, race and class structure this system.