BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — Alongside our partners at Represent Justice, IEMI co-hosted a screening this week of the Oscar-nominated film The Alabama Solution, followed by a panel discussion with Charlotte Kaufman, the film’s co-director and producer; IEMI’s Executive Director, Andrew Crespo; Mneesha Gellman, Director of the Emerson Prison Initiative; and Noble Williams, executive director of the Transformational Prison Project.
The film, which features extensive footage from contraband cell phones captured by incarcerated men across Alabama’s prison system, exposes horrific conditions inside, including widespread overdoses, forced prison labor, and violence, including homicides at the hands of prison guards. It also shares the story of incarcerated organizers building collective power in response to these conditions and eventually conducting a massive work strike across the state.
The screening and panel discussion focused attention on the intense and legally facilitated opacity and censorship that work to keep American mass incarceration out of sight and out of mind — and of the critical need to enact comprehensive and meaningful policy reforms to force open prison walls, for incarcerated and nonincarcerated journalists alike.
That is the central mission of IEMI’s Exposing Prisons Project, our effort to help expose the realities of the U.S. prison system by focusing on the reporting that makes that possible.
We are working hard with partners across the country, including organizations led by incarcerated and directly impacted organizers and leaders, to study the current legal landscape, report its many failings to the public, and pursue bold policy change, including our proposed Prison Reporting Bill of Rights, model legislation we are drafting to protect the rights of journalists to report on prison conditions from both inside and out.
