I wondered if anyone else watched it and wanted to discuss it.
Did you learn anything? Were you surprised?
I thought I knew a lot about this issue and I still learned a thing or two.
It is a hard look at the detailed inner workings of the for profit prison system: who wins, who loses, who makes money and who is forced to work for free, who understands the role racism plays and whose eyes are still closed, who is throwing one starfish back into the sea and who is looking away.
It walks though each part of the vast machine of police, probation officers, DAs and other prosecutors, and judges. Some are working together intentionally, some literally have no concept of their place in the big interconnected picture, but all their actions are inexorably moving toward one outcome: keep jails full.
Rehabilitation and restorative justice are not the goal, because a drop in prison population would cost too many powerful people too much money.
The cold hard fact of the matter is that people of all races and social classes do stupid things in their teens and twenties.
People of privileged circumstances get all kinds of extra chances.
Poor people of color go to jail.
Adam Foss is prominently featured and he rocks totally hard (and has AMAZING COOL HAIR). The first 90 seconds of his TED talk make this point perfectly.
The American Jail documentary shows the many ways that, once in the system, young people enter a downward spiral with more and more weights and obstacles added to their lives until it takes a superhuman effort just to hold on to your dignity and sense of self, and a superhuman effort to climb back out.
The people who need to see this documentary most won’t see it. They would never expose themselves to anything that might challenge the hold that GOPropaganda has on their minds.
But all progressives should see it.
American Jail is being rebroadcast right now on C-SPAN (11:00 EDT).
The floor is open for discussion…
(P.S. It was followed by an episode of Kamau Bell’s United Shades of America focusing on the non-tourist areas of Hawaii. Excellent as always.)