Administration of Justice: Prison Documentaries

Takes a penetrating look at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former medium-security prison that re-opened in 2006 as a prototype family detention center. The facility was to house immigrant children and their parents from around the world who were awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. As information about troubling conditions at the facility began to leak out, activist attorneys sought to investigate and address the issues. In telling the story of their quest, the film explores the role (and limits) of community and legal activism in bringing about change. The film leads viewers to consider how core American rights and values - protection of children, presumption of innocence, upholding the family structure as the basic unit of civil society, and America as a refuge of last resort - should apply to immigrants, particularly children.

Corporations are running many American prisons -- will they put profits before prisoners?

Presents a documentary about adolescent offenders who visit Rahway Prison in New Jersey where they experience the realities of life in a maximum security prison. In face-to-face contact with prisoners, they experience intimidation and sexual taunts and are told what it takes to survive behind bars.

An update on the adolescent offenders seen in the documentary "Scared straight" who visited Rahway Prison in New Jersey where they were shown the realities of life in a maximum security prison. Examines the long and short term effects of the Rahway Lifers' Program as delinquents and convicts shown in the original documentary are interviewed ten years later.

Scared straight! profiles a unique juvenile crime-prevention program at New Jersey's Rahway maximum-security prison, recounting the day seventeen teenage lawbreakers spent inside the prison with the some of New Jersey's most dangerous criminals. In an attempt to scare the kids out of their criminal ways, prisoners took turns describing prison life, emphasizing it's worst features. Scared straight! 20 years later traces the subsequent lives of the teens and convicts featured in the original documentary.

Investigates the torture and killing of an innocent Afghani taxi driver in a gripping probe into reckless abuses of government power. This stunningly crafted narrative demonstrates how one man's life and death symbolizes the erosion of our civil rights.

Interviews with perpetrators, witnesses, and victims examining the abuses that occurred in the fall of 2003 at the notorious Iraqi prison. Probes the psychology of how typical American men and women came to commit these atrocious acts.

Looks at life within the walls of the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa., one-time home to Al Capone, Alger Hiss, and Jimmy Hoffa. Examines the daily routines of prisoners, guards, and warden.

Raising complex and timely questions about the warehousing of America's prison population, this program accompanies photographer Ron Levine on his mission to depict the physical, emotional, and psychological conditions of aging inmates--including those near death. Levine focuses his work on Alabama's Hamilton Institute for the Age and Infirm, the first prison created specifically for elderly convicts.

The United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows children under 18 to be sentenced to life without parole. This program profiles the cases of five juveniles sentenced in Colorado to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It explores whether juveniles should receive sentences that, in effect, end any possibility of life outside of prison.