Posts tagged ‘prison’

How Mandatory Sentencing Laws Are Sending Juveniles to Prison for Life

by , posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 5:16 pm

from The Nation

In 1976, when Trina Garnett was 14 years old, she accidentally started a housefire that ended up killing two boys. Now, thirty-five years later, Trina is fifty years old and still in prison. Why is a first-world country imprisoning its children for life? The Nation‘s Liliana Segura explains.

See also: “Throwaway People: Will Teens Sent to Die in Prison Get a Second Chance?” by Liliana Segura, The Nation, May 28, 2012.

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GRITtv documentary of the week: Aurora’s own “Prison Terminal”

by , posted on Saturday, May 14th, 2011 at 3:31 pm

Last week a clip from a work-in-progress by Aurora filmmaker Edgar Barens was featured on GRITtv with Laura Flanders as their documentary of the week.


More GRITtv

“The circle of life doesn’t end when people begin a life behind bars. Incarcerated women give birth; others become gravely ill. Do prisoners have the right to comfort as they approach death? If so, who will provide it? These are real questions that many working in the prison system have ignored–but not everyone. Our documentary of the week goes behind the walls of the maximum security Iowa State Penitentiary, where a prisoner-staffed hospice program has been touching the lives of patients and caregivers alike. Filmmaker Edgar Barens spent six months embedded with program participants, and the resulting film is the intimate Prison Terminal.”

To see more video from Prison Terminal, click here. For more information on the documentary, click here.

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