Ken Burns Presents: College Behind Bars: A Film by Lynn Novick DVD

Our country needs to all sit down and watch this documentary. It tackles the important debate about whether prison should reform or punish. Never mind that it costs our country more to not rehabilitate, let's consider the impact on what education can do not only to a person's future productivity, but more importantly to a person's mental, emotional and spiritual well being. While not everyone will take to education as the people in this documentary did, the documentary does a beautiful job of tracking a variety of inmates over a period of years. I think the statistic was something like more than 1/2 of those released will return within a year but only 4% return if they've been through the BARD education program. In the end our country needs to continually ask itself, what is our end game? What is it that we really want to accomplish with prison? Because if it is just to punish, take a look at what it costs our country to do that. And then take a look at how our whole nation can rise if we instead seek to truly rehabilitate. The fact that this documentary focuses on rehab through education is just one way to consider rehabilitation, so I look at this documentary as a case being made for education improving us all no matter if we are in or out of prison.

Inspiring, not biased. These men and women get a real college education in prison. Their stories are compelling. If you have money to give to charitable organizations, I recommend looking into the Bard College Prison Initiative or others like it. This kind of thing not only changes the lives of these men and women, but it has ripple effects for the rest of the people in their lives. Breaking that cycle. Great stuff here.

This is one of the most moving, heartbreaking, inspirational stories I have ever seen. It captures the humanity of the incarcerated men and women, and the inhumanity and injustice of our prison system.

This was truly one of the best documentaries we've *ever* watched! It's incredibly compelling and there are also some very poignant moments.