PBS' four-hour series examines what it means to be a prisoner and a student in an effort to fix systemic injustice It’s a common nightmare for anyone who attended college: just as you’re preparing to sit down to write your undergraduate thesis, you reach for… Read More
Highlight: College Behind Bars
‘College Behind Bars’: TV Review
Lynn Novick's four-hour PBS documentary about the Bard Prison Initiative and the impact of educational programs as part of prison reform is provocative and inspiring. It's rare that a week passes without some buried news story about states cutting back on prison education programs or… Read More
New PBS Documentary ‘College Behind Bars’ Explores Elite Education Program
A new PBS documentary series explores a program run by an elite East Coast college that offers degrees to a select group of incarcerated men and women. “College Behind Bars” focuses on the rigorous Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) and the struggles of the participants who… Read More
In College Behind Bars, Prisoners Step Into the Classroom
Rodney Spivey-Jones looked up at his face on the TV screen bolted high on the wall, but his attention was on the men around him. Garbed in green sweatshirts and canvas pants, they sat in seven rows of folding chairs in an otherwise vacant… Read More
Incarcerated Men And Women Find Rehabilitation And Hope In ‘College Behind Bars’
A new PBS documentary series follows prisoners who earn college degrees while serving time. Director Lynn Novick and graduates Sebastian Yoon and Dyjuan Tatro talk about how the program changes lives. Read More
Higher Education and Incarceration
The documentary filmmaker Lynn Novick and Jule Hall, a Bard College Prison Initiative alumni and program associate for the Ford Foundation, talk about Novick’s new film, “College Behind Bars.” Read More
PBS chronicles 12 inmates who value education in ‘College Behind Bars’
The film fills the screen with stories about human transformation as cameras follow a dozen incarcerated men and women as they try to earn college degrees. Jule Hall was 17 when he went to prison for being an accessory to homicide. For 11 years, he… Read More
Op-Ed – Some of my proudest accomplishments happened in prison. How should I talk about them?
By Alexander Hall Opinion Contributor Alexander Hall is a housing associate with the Bard Prison Initiative. When my day begins with my phone buzzing 10 times in a row, it’s usually a bad sign. This time was different. My friends were going wild because a follow-up story… Read More
PBS’s ‘College Behind Bars’ offers a lasting lesson: Learning is its own kind of freedom
Review Should prisoners get the chance to take college courses while serving time? Seems like a fine idea to me, but my heart tends to be big on these kinds of issues. Americans, in general, have frowned on it: The sweeping Violent Crime Control and Law… Read More
Op-Ed – Former incarcerated student: Society owes men and women in prison chance to return whole
PBS documentary shows how higher education helped me remove the shackles of incarceration. College degrees in prison can do the same for others. by Giovannie Hernandez Opinion Contributor I am choosing to publicly out myself as a convicted felon in this column. Let me tell you why.In… Read More