Human face of mass incarceration gets close-up at Tribeca
Human face of mass incarceration gets close-up at Tribeca
NEW YORK (AP) — At a time when criminal justice reform has gained national attention and bipartisan support from even the leading candidates for president, a handful of documentaries at the Tribeca Film Festival are giving a close-up to the human cost of mass incarceration.
"The Return," also directed by Katie Galloway, movingly trails a pair of men released after California altered the harsh sentencing of its "three strikes" law.
David Feig's "Untouchable" delves into the distorted effects of Florida's stringent sex offender laws (more than 800,000 are listed on the state's sex offender registry).
The films are filled with tender and tragic stories of people — many of them poor, many of them black men — who made mistakes at a young age and were locked away for questionably long terms.
"The main thing I wanted my film to do was make you think about who these people are as humans: human beings who had childhoods and lives and who for one reason or another, wound up here," says Jacobson.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has voiced support for easing mandatory minimum sentencing, as has Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, who has written of an "incarceration generation."
Last year, President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.