5 important films on criminal justice reform
According to The Sentencing Project, incarceration in the US has increased by 500% in the past 40 years. This is not due to an increase in crime, but rather systemic changes in sentencing law and policy. Incarceration also affects minorities disproportionately, as Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Latinos are 2.5 times as likely. The American criminal justice system is in dire need of major reform and in order to make effective change, we must understand how this complex institution acts so unjustly.
Through these gripping documentaries, tv series, and films, we can understand and begin to untangle the interlocking problems that contribute to incarceration inequities today.
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This HBO documentary follows 13 incarcerated men at Indiana’s Pendleton Correctional Facility as they use filmmaking to share their stories and how they ended up serving decades-long sentences.
Based on the Bryan Stevenson memoir of the same name, Just Mercy tells the story of Bryan’s career as an attorney fighting to upend wrongful convictions before eventually creating the Equal Justice Initiative.
Netflix’s The Innocence Files reveals the harrowing journeys of prisoners that were wrongfully convicted and then set free by advancements in DNA evidence.
This chilling Hulu documentary uses interviews and secretly recorded conversations to unveil the NYPD’s ongoing but concealed use of policing quotas and their effects on the residents of New York.
Available to stream on both YouTube and Netflix, 13th serves as a historical primer to America’s biggest issues in the criminal justice system, including police brutality, mass incarceration, the war on drugs and private prisons.
