{"id":236437,"date":"2010-01-27T09:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T14:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:criminaljustice.change.org:\/\/49e56dcb64df454423be176b57da4945"},"modified":"2010-01-27T09:57:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T14:57:00","slug":"a-film-is-born-behind-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/236437","title":{"rendered":"A Film is Born Behind Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I recently came across a captivating short film made by eight young men in an unlikely location — New York’s Westchester County jail. The film, called Judgement<\/em>, was made during a 12-week class at the jail as part of an education project run by the Jacob Burns Film Center<\/a>, sponsored by the Elias Foundation<\/a>. I’m a fan of new media education programs inside jails and prisons even when they don’t produce work of such startling quality, but this film is something special.<\/p>\n

The eight-minute short<\/a> explores attitudes inside and outside the criminal justice system, particularly the judgments we project on each other before we’ve ever met. Without frills, it manages a stark, captivating look and feel. The prisoners who made the film sit for interviews in their orange uniforms and expound with insight on the lives — and societal forces — that led them to jail.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to give these young men an opportunity to use their personal experiences to create something lasting and positive,\u2019\u2019 says<\/a> Westchester County Executive Andy Spano, who helped start the program. “They learned a new skill and expressed themselves in a way they never had before -\u2013 something we hope will help them in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we had more programs like this across the country, we’d simultaneously enjoy a shrinking prison population and a new surge of powerful storytelling. Watch the full film here:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Hat tip to Reclaiming Futures<\/a>, where I first came across this film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently came across a captivating short film made by eight young men in an unlikely location — New York’s Westchester County jail. The film, called Judgement, was made during a 12-week class at the jail as part of an education project run by the Jacob Burns Film Center, sponsored by the Elias Foundation. I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}