On Tuesday, Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill pled guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge stemming from a 2007 arrest, ending his twelve-year nightmare in the Pennsylvania legal system. The plea came after Meek’s previous felony conviction was vacated amid a national campaign to free the rapper from his ten-plus years of probation. “I’m extremely grateful that my long legal battle is finally behind me,” Meek tweeted yesterday morning, “and I appreciate that it has sparked a much-needed discussion about probation reform and the inequalities that exist within our two Americas.”

“Two Americas” is the theme of Free Meek, a five-part docuseries that premiered on Amazon earlier this month. The series shows how Meek’s career (and freedom) has been perennially menaced by the draconian strictures of his probation, coupled with the punitive paternalism of presiding judge Genece E. Brinkley. If this sounds like a familiar story, it should. “I never really looked at it as a nightmare,” Meek reflects. “I looked at is as real life for a black kid in America.”

In the United States, the series argues, there are not just two separate justice systems but two different worlds. As deindustrialization ravaged cities across America, the “war on drugs” helped legitimize policing, jails, and prisons as the permanent solution to joblessness and economic collapse. The result: many Americans have been reduced to the status of “carceral citizens,” a “distinct form of political membership” in which people cycle through one punitive institution after another, monitored and punished by an ensemble of judges, prosecutors, and probation officers. “Cops kill people with guns, and it’s terrible,” Meek reflects, “but when judges kill people with paper, that happens a thousand times a day in America. It’s just a normal thing. A lot of lives lost to a piece of paper.”