JUS 3307: Prison Reform Assignment

With this intimate, graphic film, award-winning director Dan Edge follows four residents of a housing project in Louisville, Ky., as they cycle in and out of the state's jails and prisons. More than two years in the making, the program uses deep access to the Louisville jail to offer raw firsthand accounts from prisoners, prison staff, and people whose lives are forever altered by this troubled system, and focuses on the efforts of Mark Bolton, the city's director of corrections, as he tries to move inmates back into the community.

This BBC program joins Michael Gove – the man in charge of British prisons – on a fact-finding mission in Texas. "Hang 'em high" Texas is not the first place you might look for lessons in criminal justice, as it executes more people and locks up more offenders than anywhere else in America. But now this conservative state is the unlikely center of a rehabilitation-led revolution in prison reform that's sweeping through the US. Crime is down, prisoner numbers have fallen and on top of this, they've cut costs. Are there valuable lessons to be learned here, and are UK politicians really ready to dole out some Texan justice?