Sam Harris speaks with Lynn Novick about her four-part documentary "College Behind Bars." The film follows the progress of students in the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) as they pursue their undergraduate degrees. Sam and Lynn are joined by Jule Hall, a BPI graduate who served a 22-year sentence and is now working for the Ford Foundation. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
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Today I'm speaking with Lynn Novick and Jewel Hall.
Lynn is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary filmmaker.
She has been producing and directing documentaries for nearly 30 years, very often in collaboration with Ken Burns.
And Lynn and Ken were on this podcast not too long ago talking about their 18-hour documentary, The Vietnam War.
And of course they've done baseball and jazz and Frank Lloyd Wright and the war and prohibition.
And I believe Lynn worked with Ken all the way back to his truly groundbreaking documentary, The Civil War.
But this new film is Lynn's solo directorial debut, and it's a four-hour documentary series that she produced with Sarah Botstein, and the film is College Behind Bars.
And it really is an extraordinary documentary.
As you'll hear, it fairly blew me away.
So much so that I really want, as I say at the end of this interview, this podcast to function as a mere commercial for the documentary.
You know, as much as I like talking to Lynn and Jewel, who I'll introduce in a moment, The conversation that we had is not only no substitute for seeing the film, it really provides no indication of how powerful this documentary is.
So if this podcast does nothing more than inspire you to tune in to your local PBS station on Monday, November 25th, when the first episode drops, it will have served its entire purpose.
The film, again the title of which is College Behind Bars, covers the work of the Bard Prison Initiative, which is giving a college education to people in prison.
And the transformational power of this is so great that you really just have to bear witness to it by watching the films.
And I'm inspired enough by this work to give all of the revenue coming into the podcast associated with this episode to the Bard Prison Initiative.
So, I'll be doing that upon its release.
Anyway, as frequent listeners to the podcast know, it's not often that I entirely subordinate the show to merely shilling for someone else's project.
But in this case, the project is so good and so worthy of support that that's exactly what I am doing and should do.
My other guest today is Jule Hall, who completed the BARD program while in prison, and he was in prison for 22 years.
He is now out, and he got an undergraduate degree in German studies through BARD, and then when he got out, he continued by doing graduate work in public health, and he's now a program associate for the Ford Foundation, where he provides data analysis and strategy development.
Anyway, it was a great pleasure to get Jule on the podcast as well.
And now, without further delay, I bring you Lynn Novick and Jewel Hall.
I am here with Lynn Novick and Jewel Hall.
Lynn and Jewel, thank you for joining me.
Thank you, Sam.
Our pleasure.
Thank you.
So Lynn, I'll start with you.
You've been on the podcast before, previously, with your frequent collaborator Ken Burns.
This was for the Vietnam War documentary which you made, which was astonishing and was made doubly astonishing because I decided to Watch, I think it was 15 hours of it in the 24 hours before we actually spoke.
So I just basically came from the front to get on our podcast together.
So I was slightly deranged in that conversation.
But I mean, that was an amazing film.
And then you, as many people know, have made Many other remarkable films together with Ken, starting with the Civil War and baseball and jazz and the war and prohibition.
But this new series you have, College Behind Bars, I mean, this is so arresting in a very different way.
I mean, I guess the main variable here is that This isn't a historical documentary.
You're exploring a problem that we're all living with now, and that's born home really in every minute of this thing.
As a caveat to everything we're going to say here, I'm hoping we'll have a great conversation, but there's no way this conversation is a surrogate for seeing the film you've made.
We will tell people where and how they can do that at the end, but In fact, let's just do that up front.
Where is this being released, and where can people see College Behind Bars?
Sure, yeah.
The film airs on PBS.
It's a four-part series, and it's airing in two chunks on November 25th and 26th, the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 9 East Coast time.
I'm not sure in the middle of the country if it might be at 8.
And it'll be streaming on pbs.org and on the PBS app.
And it'll be streaming for 60 days.
Great.
And I'm going to wait to introduce you, Jewel, because we've got to figure out what the context is here.
Lynn, tell me what the Bard Prison Initiative is and how this came to be the focus of your film.
Well, in 2012, we were finishing promoting our film On Prohibition that Ken and I made with Sarah Botstein, our producer.
And Sarah and I were invited to give a guest lecture about the film in a college class.
And we'd been traveling around the country doing interviews and talking about the film and showing clips.
In fact, we had been in Washington at the White House doing a screening for Top law students in the D.C.
area a few weeks before.
So we'd done a lot of talking about the film, and we went into this college class, which happened to be part of something called the Bard Prison Initiative, which is a program that offers college degrees to people who are incarcerated.
So Sarah and I went into a maximum security prison with our clip reel and the professor who was teaching this course, and we showed our clips like we'd been doing all around the country, and we weren't sure what to expect, and we had the most interesting and thoughtful and serious and sophisticated conversation with the students in the maximum security prison in the classroom.
And, you know, it was sort of intellectually incredibly challenging and thrilling and also sort of overwhelming to think about having that conversation in that place.
And that was so sort of stunning to us that as we left the prison, Sarah and I said to each other, this was an extraordinary experience.
We did not realize this was happening here.
This would be an amazing film.
We weren't thinking that we would actually make it at the moment because we were just embarking on our Vietnam series in 2012.
But over time, we got more interested and sort of involved.
I taught in the program myself the following year, and Sarah taught some courses with me, and we just decided that this was too important a story to have anybody else do it, and we decided to throw our hat in the ring and make the film.
We're going to get into what it's like for the viewer to watch this, but now let me just bring Jewel in here, because Jewel, you are an alum of the program, and I guess I want to really talk about your whole experience from childhood, really.
But before we get there, just tell us what you're doing now since you left BPI.
I'm a program associate with the Ford Foundation, where I do strategy development and data analysis.
Nice.
Before we get into the actual journey you create for the viewer through the film, Lynn, I just want to talk about the context in which we're having this conversation.
One thing that's borne home really poignantly in this film is that, you know, as hopeful as this all is, because we meet these extraordinary students, you know, who are incarcerated, but they're making, most of them, such immense progress through this education program, that it's incredibly hopeful
Look at what is happening for these people and what is possible and yet the knowledge that this is such a rare experience for someone in prison gives a feeling of you know desperation and Futility even as well for the viewer.
So it's it really is a the light and the dark of this are born home more or less every minute of watching this film and The context in which we're having this conversation is one in which new laws are likely to be passed that affect this, and we have a history of passing some very bad laws with respect to educating people who are incarcerated.
I don't know which one of you wants to take this, but can you just sketch what the picture is here of just how many people are in prison and what we spend and what we don't spend and how crazily masochistic this all is?
You know, in some ways the numbers are shocking enough themselves and then the actual human waste and cost is even more devastating.
America has 2.2 million people locked up in prisons and jails across the country.
We have over-incarcerated to such an epic scale that we're the world's largest jailer proportional to our population.
And we spend $80 billion a year to do that.
And the recidivism rate is very high.
And most people who are incarcerated do not have access to meaningful educational opportunity while incarcerated.
And many of them did not have that access before incarceration.
And so it's not really a surprise that people leave prison demoralized and, you know, unprepared to return to society and be productive citizens.
And you're right, this program, I mean, that's why Sarah and I felt so strongly about making the film.
It shows what is possible, and it is hopeful, and it also is a huge indictment of what has been going on, and I think our society hasn't paid enough attention.
Yeah, and one detail that you mentioned, I think, in the first episode, again, this is a four-part, four-hour documentary, is that it's over 600,000 people are released every year from prison back into the population, and the recidivism rate is somewhere around 50%, but it's only, it's less than 4% for people who go through this program.
And first, the politically inconvenient fact that This was all made much worse by the Clinton crime bill in 1994, when Pell Grants for inmates were rescinded, essentially.
And we should note, inconveniently, that this bill was written by Senator Joe Biden.
And it appears to have been disastrous.
I mean, do you think I have that history right?
I do.
And I think Jewel could speak about a little bit more because he personally experienced some of this.
Yeah, when I was incarcerated, I was incarcerated in 1994.
And in 1995, that's when the bill you referred to was implemented.
And I actually witnessed the college programs being pulled out of the prison I was in.
I was in Coxsackie Correctional Facility in New York State.
And you correctly characterized this, Sam.
People were demoralized.
People felt hopeless.
There was a lot of Worry about how people would continue their education.
There was a lot of despair about how a person would survive in this environment that is violent, laden with drugs, and, you know, not many constructive opportunities for people who already achieved a high school diploma or a high school equivalency diploma.
There wasn't much for people to do anything constructive.
So I actually witnessed that period from 1995 to when I personally enrolled in Bard, I think around 2003.
I saw that prison was like a different place when college wasn't inside a prison.
And the Bard program is privately funded, right?
Yes.
So there's no longer taxpayer funding for this.
But this really directs us to the question which you raise explicitly at one point, Lynn, in the film.
of what is the purpose of prison.
We're incarcerating people for at least two reasons, as punishment and to warehouse people and to take people off the street who we deem Dangerous, in many cases.
But in the vast majority of cases, we know we're going to release these people back to society.
And the fact that we're not taking the obvious steps to rehabilitate them, it just seems like a self-inflicted wound that you would never imagine we would commit upon ourselves, you know, with open eyes.
And somehow we did, which is a pretty damning indictment of our public policy over the last 30, 40 years, as we've exponentially increased the prison population and taken away the programs that would make it possible for people to return to society.
95% of people, like you said, are coming home.
And then we blame the people who come home and aren't really prepared.
For the failing that is actually on all of us.
And, you know, I think for a lot of us who haven't been impacted by the criminal justice system, all of this has been happening kind of offstage, you know, and I think as a society, we're beginning to pay a lot more attention to the sort of criminal injustice, mass incarceration, the lack of opportunity and rehabilitation.
But for a long time, it wasn't a central focus.
And I think a bigger issue is also that people on the inside want something to transform.
They want something to give them a platform through which they can change their lives.
But at that time period, there wasn't nothing.
You know, guys was literally standing in the yard.
Most of the day in front of a television, just watching TV and, you know, getting into trouble.
But people really wanted something to, you know, motivate them to make their time in prison less monotonous, make it more constructive.
But college programs have been pulled out and, you know, there was that despair.
Yeah, well, the effect on the people in the program is so stark, and just the way in which it changes their relationship to being in prison.
I want to get to that in your story, Jewel, so let's just start with really the beginning.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in New York.
Brownsville, Brooklyn, even, I would say maybe two years ago, was labeled to have had one of the most violent streets in New York City.
There was a lot of violence in my neighborhood where I grew up.
I always loved school, but, you know, a lot of my peers would pick on people who showed that attention to school.
So I kind of, you know, saw that it was feasible to not let people know that I love school so much, you know?
I grew up in a single-parent home, and I remember wanting to come home to do my homework, actually.
I was excited about that.
Yeah.
So was this a, I mean, there's this phrase acting white that has been exported from, from that experience.
Was that the framing of it for you among your peers?
I don't think it was necessarily about race at that point.
I think it was just a sense of who's cool, you know, young kids who don't have a perspective on what life really is about and how education fits into, you know, our lives.
So, you know, it was more about girls and hanging out and, you know, being seen and you couldn't do much of that in school, you know?
So it was that type of criticism like, oh, come hang out with us or, you know, you should be with this girl or, you know, and not in school.
So it was just a general sense.
And were you in a gang at that point?
No, I'd never been in a gang.
Although, you know, I grew up in an area where I had close affinities with my neighbors, you know, but I never was in a gang.
Right.
Okay, so how did you wind up in prison?
I wound up in prison because, you know, I made some bad decisions in life.
I basically, you know, like I said, I stopped.
I actually had a prison open my eyes to this.
Once I stopped putting emphasis on school, once I stopped Focusing on school, that's when I began a life of, you know, being in the streets, cutting class, fighting, that led me to the situation where I was incarcerated for some violent act that, you know, was occurring in my area where another guy opened fire on my, right where I lived.
And, you know, I had this sense of, you know, this has happened before.
I don't know how it's going to stop.
I think the only, with my 17 year old mind, you know, incorrectly thinking, it's only going to stop if somebody fight back.
And that just led to a whole bunch of things that were destructive and led me right into prison cell.
So, if I recall correctly, you then retrieved a gun, and then a gunfight ensued, and then someone who you were close with in your neighborhood got killed as an innocent bystander.
The person who you were shooting at wound up shooting the person you knew, and basically you were charged as an accomplice to that murder.
Is that correct?
Yes, that's a fair assessment, yes.
So, actually I want to, this is one question I have, and I want to get back to your experience going through the program, Joel, but it seems to me that there must be people who are not suited to the BPI program for a variety of reasons, but I mean, I guess one effect of watching this film, which is fairly startling, is
To be confronted by the feeling that the viewer's expectation of who's in prison is fairly erroneous, right?
I mean, we're introduced to people like Jules, like half a dozen people who are extremely charismatic and filled with promise and, you know, just being transformed by education.
And it's incredibly inspiring, and obviously I don't want to discount any of that, but One also has to assume that there are people in prison who have committed crimes, you know, so terrible or who are so, you know, incorrigible or unrepentant that they would never even be considered as candidates for the program, and we're not seeing any of that.
And I guess I just want to ask Jewel just what the selection criteria are like for the program, and just to give me kind of a reality check as to, you know, what are the kind of background facts of, you know, who else were you in prison with?
And that's part of the context in which you're pursuing your education at that point.
Well, Sam, I would say this.
One, being admitted into the program, there's an explicit decision not to consider your crime.
There's a sense that with BPI and many of the people who support us that, you know, no one is beyond redemption.
And whether it's For the purposes of release, like Lynn just mentioned, you know, 95% of the people incarcerated will come home, so we will want them to return to society to be better people and contribute to society like many BPI students are doing now.
There's also I think we could interview or talk to officers, correction officers in the prison who actually felt that having a college program improved the day-to-day operations of the prison because guys, regardless of their crime, regardless of how much time they had, was more concerned about, you know, taking care of their classes and Studying and not getting in trouble.
So it has a constructive effect on the prison itself and not just about people being released.
But one other thing I would like to mention is that when it comes to who is not able to take the program, I will also push back against that a bit because one of the qualities, one of the things I think that makes BPI what it is, is that the students help each other.
We had a way of developing a level of fraternity, and still do, you know?
Where if we're in the same class and you're struggling, I'ma help you.
I'ma go into the yard and study with you, or we're gonna find the time to make sure that we all get this material.
So there was a level of camaraderie and support amongst the prisoners itself that I want to say was actually supported by the BPI administrators.
It was encouraged by BPI administrators for us to take a level of autonomy and, you know, self-direction in order to educate ourselves to the degree and make the most out of material we were presented with.
And I just would chime in one more thing I've heard Jewel talk about a lot, which is, you know, every year a new crop of students are admitted.
And sometimes the students that are already in the program would look at the other students and say, oh, I don't know, you know, I've seen that guy in the yard and I don't know, you know, is he really going to be able to do this or whatever?
And, you know, people rise to the occasion and rise to the challenge over and over again.
Yeah, I was in charge, I was charged with orientating students to the rigors of the program when they made, when they got in and made that transition from just being incarcerated to actually being incarcerated and taking this rigorous program.
And I saw people who were in the yard Involved in all types of negativity.
But once they got in a program, they became the most engaged, articulate, you know, intelligent people.
And you're right, Sam, there were people who struggled with the material.
But again, we were encouraged to help each other out.
And we did.
And I think that is what's spilling out to a lot of BPI alumni who are home, providing solutions to the problems and helping people out out here.
Well, so I'm reminded of the scene, I guess it's the first class, where the instructor says, as you said, we're not considering what you did to get into prison at all.
Your crimes are totally irrelevant.
You know, here you're not a prisoner, you're a student.
And that was a very powerful kind of induction into the curriculum.
But I guess I'm just, I'm still left with the feeling that there's a bit of a selection effect here, which I would only assume is in some way natural because, I mean, for instance, I don't remember anyone who you focused on, Lynn, in the film whose crime or crimes were such that one would be really worried that this person was ever going to get out of prison.
I mean, there's some people who are just not going to get out of prison because what they did was so terrible, right?
Well, I was considered one of those people, Sam.
I, you know... Yeah, but like, I mean, I just understand the logic of your crime, and this is not the kind of crime that makes me think you're the sort of person who wanted to kill and harm people in general.
This was a Yeah, maybe I could jump in and just say that I think the film and the people's, everyone's stories provides a lot of social context for the environments people came from and the forces that shaped them, the traumas and all the things that we know are, you know, end up resulting in violence and decisions and the trajectories that end up with people being incarcerated.
And so I think what the program shows and the success of the student shows is that, you know, when you teach in the program, you don't know anyone's background either.
You're just there as a faculty and you don't, you're not supposed to, and you don't investigate and you relate to the students as students.
And that's really important philosophically to the program.
But it also just speaks to this larger question that I think is, you know, who's to judge who is or isn't capable of change and redemption?
And I think without knowing the full picture of everybody's circumstances, it's, you know, it's really a pretty tough call.
And that's not something that the program does or that we as filmmakers did either, actually.
And we kind of hope the film, in a way, opens up that conversation for a different, to have in a different way.
And I would emphasize that, you know, even the people who may have that categorization, I don't, you know, I'm not really sure.
I don't want to label anyone, but there's an effect that these college programs have on the prison environment itself that many officers were supportive of and appreciative of, you know, because they understood that I have to come here and work.
As long as I'm here working and these guys are focused on positive things, that's a good thing for me and my life and my family.
Yeah, so I guess let me give you a little more of the motivation for my question here, because one aspect of the film that which I found pretty flabbergasting, I guess if I thought about it for a few minutes beforehand, I could have anticipated it, but it did hit me as a
a real point of surprise, which is the resistance to the program and the resistance to programs like this coming from not just society at large, but as you say, from the guards whose jobs you can anticipate would be getting easier the more people in prison are getting educated and having their more fulfilling experience.
The case that really just was jaw-dropping for me, even one of the students in the program, her own mother, resented the fact that she was getting a free education in prison, right?
And so maybe you can, both of you, just kind of talk us through the logic by which people would resent the fact that prisoners are being exposed to great books and a path of self-actualization through education, and also just why the guards didn't figure prominently in the film.
Because if I'm not mistaken, the guards are kind of mostly absent or entirely absent in the film in terms of their testimony as to how this affects prison life.
I can speak a little bit about the officers, which was that the officers union, we asked repeatedly for, could we interview some officers?
And they never responded.
So we actually don't represent what the officers think or don't think.
And so we actually don't know.
We heard, you know, occasionally when we were filming, Sarah and I would talk to officers who were hanging out with us, but we have nothing on the record from them.
So we only have the commissioner of the State of New York's Commissioner of Corrections saying that, yes, it's true that, you know, there can be tension because the officers often don't have a college education themselves.
And I think we take a position that, you know, officers should have access to education.
We're not.
Trying to create a dichotomy.
And, you know, Sam, you bring up a good point with Tamika's mother, because it's important to recognize that people who are against or have information that makes them take a position that's against this program are generally the same population of people.
You know, mostly lower class people of color, you know, of course, some lower class white people there as well.
So I think it's important, and I love your show, Sam, for this reason as well, because it's important to understand how politics come in and kind of distort and allow people to take positions that's not necessarily in their interests.
You know, we take the position with this film that College education should be accessible to everyone in America who wants it.
Not necessarily about, you know, the crime, your job, your economic status.
We see the not only personal development potential, but also civic responsibility that many of these, like you just referred to, the humanities and So, you know, to answer your question a bit more directly, yes, there are people like Tamika's mother who were or are against this program, but I will say two things about that.
One, even Tamika's mother, when she had more information, she realized the benefit of this program.
And two, the second thing I'll say is that, you know, college access is a problem beyond prison.
And we should not... I like to look at this film as showing the potential of education overall, and it just so happens that it's in a prison environment.
And we shouldn't overlook that, you know, because I think education can be something that, you know, makes America great again, you know?
Yeah, I would just... To invoke someone who's probably not a friend of the program.
Well, interestingly enough, yeah, you know, the Obama administration started in a small way to have this Second Chance Pell pilot program, and the Trump administration has continued it and expanded it.
And Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is in favor of Pell Grant restoration for people incarcerated.
So this is sort of interesting.
No, well, it's unexpected in the universe of politics that we're dealing with.
And the other thing I would just say, because this is such an important point, so thank you for bringing it up, is that We have seen the politics shift over the time that Sarah and I were working on the film.
So when we first started, we felt a lot more of the resentment and kind of the, I would say, the political argument that you hear to make Islam making was more prevalent.
And over time, up to today, we feel we've heard and we see that it is shifting quite a bit.
And for the reasons Jewel said, and also just because of how much money we're spending on mass incarceration, When you spend money on education, it saves money in the long run to a significant degree.
On one to four dollar ratio.
Right.
So, you know, it isn't really about saving taxpayer dollars at all.
It's actually about denying opportunity and access to education primarily to communities of color in America.
I mean, that's the subtext that's kind of not made explicit, but is there even With someone like Tamika's mom sort of, you know, hearing the rhetoric and expressing it, but it has largely to do with the resentment of the high cost of education and also, you know, frustration with her daughter being incarcerated and the suffering that their family has gone through to endure that.
And I think one of the things that's very instructive about Tamika's mother, she also has a daughter that's a correctional officer.
Right.
So, you know, these are the same populations of people that we're talking about, you know, so I definitely like to, you know, keep that in mind once we get into the distinctions and arguments made for or against.
But I honestly feel that anyone who sees this film, they're going to be for something like this in prison for people who are incarcerated.
Yeah, well, there's no question of that.
I mean, it's even to the point where you just can't imagine anyone having a different reaction to it.
It's just, it's so obviously good.
And as you said, Jule, the economics also work out.
I think, if I'm not mistaken, there was a RAND study which said that for every dollar spent In prison, on education, you're saving five, you know, out of prison.
I believe that was the math.
And so the last time this failed, what was it?
I think it was in 2014 that Andrew Cuomo tried to pass a law in this area, and then he got so much pushback that he just withdrew the initiative, I think.
That's correct.
It was a trial balloon and he didn't really put much force behind it after making the proposal.
I think he was surprised by the reaction.
And again, I think we should take heed to the politics involved because this isn't a new thing.
College has been A way through which people are prepared to be released from prison to be productive members of society.
We could go back to the 80s where, you know, it was known that these programs were on the benefit for society.
Because I actually believe as long as you provide a person in prison With the quality of education, once that person released, that's not an individual gain, that's a societal gain.
Just like education will benefit an individual to go into society and make society better.
It has no difference for a person who's incarcerated.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, so, Jewel, back to your experience here.
So, when you joined the program, how did it change your sense?
I mean, you could speak personally, or I guess you can also speak for some of your fellow alums in the program.
How did it change your sense of being in prison and your relationship to the time that was yet ahead for you to serve?
It changed it radically.
You know, what you just quoted, I think is my quote.
Is somebody saying what I said?
But this is what I usually speak about.
I remember the first orientation I partook in when I got into BPI and one of the administrators, Daniel Karpowitz, made a statement, he told us from now on, you should no longer look at yourself as a person incarcerated in a prison.
You should look at yourself as a student who's part of a bigger institution that is barred.
And that was so uncomfortable for me because I had spent maybe 11 years in prison being told I was an inmate.
And not only being told, believing that I needed to stay in a lane that was an inmate to survive.
But being in Bard College changed my whole identity of myself.
And I think that is important for one reason, if none other, there's many, that it put me in a mind state to understand what re-entry or how re-entry starts in prison.
I needed to get out of the mind state of looking at myself as an inmate if I was going to be successful when I'm released.
I needed to start that process as early as possible.
But nonetheless, When people get into bar, my experience is that a couple of the qualities that the program had that put us in a position to be successful was one, the responsibility was on us.
Not many people in prison give people the responsibility for their own development.
You know, and I think that's really instructive because once a person is given that responsibility, you'll see what you see in the film, a lot of us engaging with our past and using the education to kind of like situate ourselves and understand how we got into the positions we were in.
I think that's the path of, you know, change, transformation.
Two, we were forced to give up our values in prison.
You know, in prison, there's norms and values that people take on.
Oh, I don't wanna mess with this guy because of his crime, or I don't wanna mess with this guy because it is.
But again, Bard put us in a position to say, none of that matters.
Only thing that matters is if you understand this material, are you putting your best foot forward, and are you relying on the other people in your cohort?
To do so.
So it built a fraternity where in prison, if you're not in a gang, you're highly individual.
So this program also put us in a position to say, yo, we need to rely on each other.
So those are just a couple of the things that I would love to have a discussion about.
How many Bard alum are out here now manifesting those same qualities in the work they're doing?
Because there's the fraternity, there's the understanding of self and environment and how to use these critical thinking skills we learned in the program out here for real life situations.
Yeah, that comes through so vividly in the film, the sense that you and the rest of the people in the program are forming with one another of fraternity and support in the classroom, which just seems like it is clearly functioning by a different dynamic than what is ordinarily going on in a prison.
And then the connection that's being made to the outside world and to, in virtually everybody's case, a future life in society based on the material that is being worked with.
Some of the most arresting shots, Lynn, were just Occasionally you would linger on somebody's stack of books or their bookshelf and just to see, the most viewers will be familiar with some of the books there and certainly the topics of the nonfiction books, and to just see what a lifeline this material is for people.
I don't know.
The effect, it was like an unusually powerful meditation on the profundity of what education is for a civilization and the profundity of the missed opportunity for many of these people to have gotten it earlier in life.
You're basically seeing people who have been dying of thirst given a cold drink of water.
It's really just a very powerful experience that you've created.
Thank you for saying that, and thank you for looking at the books, because we love seeing what people are reading, and you can see a lot.
I know my bookshelf at home says a lot about me, what books I chose and what books I care about, and seeing the books that the students have in their cells or in the library that are on the table reflects where they're at and what they're thinking about, and that's insight into What's going on inside is so, so powerful.
And the tall drink of water is exactly right.
One of the students at one point says, literally, it's like you're in the desert and you get into BPI and you found an oasis.
And the books play a role because, you know, I engage with Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, another one of my favorites is Walter Mosley, and I didn't just engage it by myself.
I engaged it with my classmates.
There's that level of interaction with each other, so I'm not only getting my impression, Of Friedrich Nietzsche, but everyone else is in that class, in my class.
I'm getting their impression as well.
And I think that is just like, I know for me, it was like magical.
It's like, wow, it's opening my mind to so much.
You know, I think there is something we find, Sarah and I find in the collaborative process of making the film with our cinematographers and our editor, Trisha Reedy.
You know, when you're really in that, and I've heard you speak about it, this idea of flow.
And I'm not sure I've ever really experienced it, but, you know, there's something euphoric about this, you know, pure intellectual or creative collaboration with other people, where you do something more than you could do on your own, and you sort of, you're almost outside yourself.
And we felt that sometimes when making the film, and I can see from what you were saying, I think that's the same thing that happens among the students when they're really deeply digging into the material.
And what's the experience for the instructors in general?
Did you — I mean, it comes through, you see them in action a lot, but I'm wondering what your sidebar conversations are like with instructors.
Yeah, you know, when we started off, Sarah and I did think we were going to focus a bit more on the professors, because we were really interested in what their experiences were, but we ended up realizing the students were really going to be the focus.
But Craig Wilder, he's — Well, you had something like 400 hours of film — Oh, right.
— that sounded four.
Yes, exactly.
There was a lot on the cutting room floor, and one of the things where some of the professors extended interviews about why they teach in the program and what they find so joyous and fulfilling.
And it's not just this program.
Any other professor I've ever met who's taught in a prison will say that these are the most engaged, serious, thoughtful students and some of the smartest and most capable students who work the hardest.
And so you walk into those classrooms, and it's the most fulfilling academic experience they have.
So professors who teach at MIT or on the Bard campus or at Columbia find that, you know, teaching the students in BPI invigorates their love of teaching, their relationship to the material, and they bring that back to their classrooms, back on the main campuses where they teach, and everything kind of gets elevated.
And, you know, you just feel it.
It's palpable, actually, in the way that they sort of walk into the classroom and are there totally present for the students.
And everyone is fully present, which I think is also really interesting, you know, because they go back to this old-fashioned teaching style of a blackboard and chalk, and everybody is paying attention, and you're looking at books and pieces of paper.
There's no screens, and so there's sort of a tactile, physical relationship to learning also, which, you know, it's just everyone's focused and involved.
It's amazing to see the challenge for the students to carve out the time to actually just do the coursework.
Many of them are staying up very late at night because it's the only time where it's quiet enough to actually read.
Maybe, Jewel, you can speak to what that was like.
Yeah, you know, again, you know, the professors didn't let up on us.
I would argue they were a little bit harder.
I think they would say that too, yeah.
But yeah, and you know, a great example is the Senior Project.
When I wrote my Senior Project, I finished with a 124-page exposition on the guest worker program in Germany.
And reading and writing the project, I remember there were points where I was just looking at the paper and crying.
Telling myself, I can't do this.
This is too hard.
You know, it's a challenging thing, but people around me was supportive to a degree, you know, because they understood what I was up against.
Of course you had the noise and, you know, I had to put myself in situations.
Not to be distracted.
I had to like wait to certain times when I knew people weren't in the cell block, you know, so it could be quiet and I could focus.
But nonetheless, you know, I think that is also a quality of education because it takes that level of innovation and structured time and being able to say, this is the best time for me to get the best results.
I think that is all part of the educational process.
And it's no, I would argue it's not easy in prison, maybe even a little harder.
I don't want to, you know, I think now that I'm home, I see the challenges that students out here face trying to stay focused on school.
So I'm not trying to elevate one over the other.
I just think that as a general matter, it's part of the educational process in spite of the distractions to be able to say, okay, this is how I need to structure my time in order to get this material done.
Yeah, and this is one of the through lines in the film is the adventures of the debate club, which is, you know, a subset of the students here, but they debate, I think, was it West Point first?
Yes.
Well, we saw them practicing for University of Vermont.
We didn't film the actual debate, and then we filmed them against West Point, and then And then Harvard, yeah.
And I guess we don't want to spoil the effect, but I mean, it's just amazing that that's the level at which this is culminating, right?
You have the Bard prison team against West Point in one scene and Harvard in another, and these are completely appropriate pairings.
It's magical, and yet There's a lot that has to change to spread the magic.
How hopeful are you, Lynn, that this is going to go in the right direction in a time frame that is at all satisfying?
Well, I guess I have to live in a way that I, just to get through life, I am hopeful.
Just generally, I try to be hopeful, even though I think right now we're living in a pretty dark time.
Sometimes I feel very despairing.
But on this particular issue, I feel actually very hopeful because we are in a moment where Congress is, in fact, considering legislation to restore Pell eligibility for people incarcerated.
So that is quite something.
And then the question will be, sort of, are there any limitations in terms of restricting it to certain kind of offenses or other kind of offenses or certain sentences?
And then on another level, just also, will we hold organizations and educational institutions accountable to provide education to people who are incarcerated that is rigorous and demanding and doesn't condescend to them?
And does, you know, what BARD does or any other similar program on the outside?
that people deserve the opportunity.
So those are things that are real.
And, you know, scaling up, as they say, from a very tiny percentage of people right now who are incarcerated who have access to quality degree-granting programs to the 2 million people that are incarcerated, that's a big climb.
But it's certainly within our reach to both decrease the prison population, which we are doing and need to do much more aggressively, and also expand these programs, you know, on a huge scale.
And I am.
I am optimistic.
And we're really excited that the film is coming out right now for that reason.
I'm very optimistic, too, if I may add, because, you know, I was incarcerated in 93-94 when the talk was just super predator, lock him up, throw away the key.
And we are changing the narrative.
I see the film and its role in changing this narrative.
Sam, you cited the way in which people are in opposition to this program.
And I think this is helping them to see a different narrative about what prisoners are trying to achieve while they're inside and what they are capable of doing.
And because of that, I'm so hopeful.
So, Julie, at one point you mentioned the other alums and what they're doing.
People will go and see this film and fall in love with several people who are making their way through the program, and there's some follow-up, but obviously the film was in the can earlier than this moment.
What can you say about what people are doing and just what it's like to get out of prison having gone through BPI?
Well, I'll take the last part first.
Getting out of prison after going through BPI was a piece of cake.
In a sense that I felt because I did that senior project, there was nothing that I couldn't do.
Now that doesn't mean that I wasn't Face with the stigma of being incarcerated whenever I went on a job interview, but I had the level of confidence and as well as I could articulate myself in a job interview to continue and push and push.
And that was a trait that I learned from BPI.
And another factor, like I mentioned earlier in the interview or in the podcast, are the fraternity we have.
We have an informal network of BPI students in the New York area, not just in the New York area.
We have people in overseas, in Jamaica.
We have people down South that are doing some very important things.
They are actually Engage with their communities, whether through non-profit organizations like New York.
We have so many people in the bail reform space and philanthropic space and, you know, working to educate people or youth at risk, you know, that are BPI alum.
But we also have people who are making that leap into the medical institution or getting their PhDs.
You know, so, you know, I just like to bring attention to the fact that, you know, we recognize that, you know, we have had in the past, our past selves, we have caused harm in society, but now it's like a conscious, driven effort to bring solutions to society.
We have people all over in many sectors that are doing so many constructive things that's helping out the world today.
I want to revisit part of the conversation where I was talking about, you know, offenders whose crimes might have been, you know, too grave for admission into the program, and just to get a clearer sense of kind of the ground truth here.
One, I guess a question for you both, are there people admitted to the program who are never getting out of prison, who are, let's say, on Is there anyone on death row admitted to the program, or is there some criterion by which people are selected against based on what their actual sentence is?
Well, so New York State doesn't have the death penalty, so we don't have death row, thank God.
So that clears that up.
And, you know, really for, I think, if Max Kenner, the director of the program were here, he would say that really because of limitations of space and resources, anyone who has a sentence of life without parole, which is a very tiny, tiny percentage of people, Danielle Pletka But there are many people with life sentences, which means you might have 20 years to life or 30 years to life, which means that you have to go to the parole board after 20 years are over.
And then it's up to the parole board whether Jewel had a sentence of a certain number of years, 22 years to life.
So there are people who have gone through the program and go to the parole board and get released and some don't.
And so that's a real thing.
And one of the, you know, issues that come up is that you might finish the program and then you still have time to serve, and you can keep taking courses and mentoring other students and that kind of thing.
But, you know, it's a tiny percentage of people that have life without parole, and most other people who are incarcerated, as we said before, will be coming home, but some may not.
Right.
And, Joel, you served 22 years?
Yes, I served 22 years.
I was sentenced to life.
That essentially said I didn't have any requirement to be released, you know, but I had the consideration of release after 22 years.
And was your experience in BPI part of what the parole board considered?
Because I remember, I frankly can't remember if it was you or some other student there, but I remember the frustration as a viewer seeing someone have their parole denied at a point in the film where it was pretty obvious this is not a parole that you should be denying.
Was that you?
Yeah, that was me.
Or were there multiple cases there?
Yeah, it should factor into the conversation.
What was that like?
Well, you know, I can't speak for the parole board.
You know, they keep their decisions, rightly so, you know, amongst themselves.
They don't want to, you know, cause much controversy.
But I think, you know, for me, my personal experience of going through the program, then going to parole, feeling like I was ready, but also having that self-reflective Stance of what I was in jail for it was hard.
It was really hard to be denied You know, I would felt I was ready But it forced me to sit down a little bit longer and think about why I was there, you know But nonetheless the next parole board I had I was released But that doesn't bring much attention to the fact that there are many who are still being denied I think BPI we are building a level of respect and understanding that we are sincere and
People, we are different people than we went in, but nonetheless, you know, politics or, you know, this idea, this false dichotomy of the violent and the nonviolent crime comes into play whenever a person comes up for parole as well.
I will say that the New York State does have a policy that if you've completed some part of college program, you can get six months off your sentence.
So if you're going to be released, you can come home six months earlier.
But that's what I was denied.
Right.
That's what Jule was denied.
So it's not automatic, but you're eligible to apply for that.
Yes.
Right.
OK.
So, Jule, you just you mentioned something about a false dichotomy between violent and nonviolent crime.
There's a picture here of one obvious solution to the problem of mass incarceration is to recognize that the war on drugs has been a terrible failure and that far too many people are locked up for, you know, truly victimless crimes.
Lynn, perhaps you can speak to this as well.
This is obviously the low-hanging fruit of reform, but what percentage of the prison population is actually, quote, non-violent?
I'm pretty sure that it's about half.
So, you know, and these categorizations, and I'm not a criminal justice expert, I will say.
I have done a fair amount of research so I can understand the big picture.
But about half of the people in prisons and jails are incarcerated for crimes that are labeled as violent.
And in some cases, or a significant percentage of cases, The label violent doesn't mean that that person actually committed physical harm to somebody.
So the label is used fairly broadly.
So that's one thing and we could have a whole long conversation about that.
But then in addition, you know, there are people who are incarcerated who have hurt other people physically.
And so that's where we, you know, we need to at least face the fact that as a society, we're not going to resolve or settle or solve mass incarceration, where we have incarcerated people at such an enormous scale, without addressing the fact that there are people, many people in prison, hundreds of thousands who have committed physical harm, but are, you know, trying to redeem themselves.
And also, you know, Reckon with that and make the best of what they have of their future.
And we can't do that if we don't offer them the opportunity to get an education while incarcerated.
And I would like to add, if you take that population of people, you know, there's some great work being done by, if I may give credit to Bruce Western, he's doing some great research that shows, one, violence is situational.
It's environmental.
It's not person-based.
Inherent.
Inherent.
Two, many of the people who are incarcerated for violent crime were once victims of violent crimes.
So these are levels of evidence that we are engaged with now that shows, that's why I use the term false dichotomy of the violent person or the violent crime, because, you know, we, it's more nuanced and engaged.
And I'm not trying to belittle any type, I don't wanna, I'm not the type to deny the significance of People who committed these crimes and how they cause harm or whatever.
But nonetheless, we have to understand that the label violent isn't adequate label to describe what has happened.
We need to think more about environmental circumstances as well as It's generational, if not historical, particularly with women, who are the fastest growing population now, are being incarcerated at a higher rate, coming to prison with so many incidents of violence committed against them.
And, you know, I just think that we have to, like, be having more nuanced understanding of what's happening.
Yeah, go ahead, Lynn.
I was going to say, it kind of goes back to the question that, you know, we talked about at the beginning, which is what is prison for?
So, you know.
Yeah, I guess I just want to linger there for a moment because I feel like all of us, certainly everyone who's been out of prison their whole lives, have had The reality of crime and violence advertised to them, if they haven't experienced it directly, it's been advertised in film and fiction and in, you know, true crime literature, and that amplifies a certain data point that no doubt exists.
I mean, that there are some people who are actually psychopaths.
There are people who take sadistic pleasure in harming others, and I mean, they didn't invent themselves either.
I mean, this is situational problem as well based on, you know, what their genes are and who their parents were and how they were brought up and all the rest and whether they were victimized.
But there's no question there are some truly scary people who we don't want to let out of prison.
But for the vast majority of violent crimes, as you point out, Jewel, there are many more shades of gray as to what happened there and how, you know, any one of us, you know, more or less psychologically normal person put into a situation might find themselves, you know, in, you know, on the wrong side of a gun.
And again, it's not that the world is filled with bad people who would do bad things under any conceivable set of circumstances.
The world is far more full with people who are very much like ourselves.
Who are pushed into very unfortunate circumstances where a range of, you know, bad and worse options seem to be open to them.
And so to just be put into closer contact with the details of these stories, you know, in a film like the one you've made, Lynn, and to just, you know, feel the, you know, the door of compassion open, it's really an experience people need to give themselves because everyone has had the Hollywood version piped into their brains since the moment they could watch television.
And it's not a clear picture of violence or its casualties on either side.
Thank you very much.
That's a very, very thoughtful and generous description of what we've tried to do.
So Sarah and I are very grateful.
Thank you.
Yeah, we want people to talk about this.
We want to have this conversation.
We think the film is a good way through which people could start investigating their ideas and understanding what is like, you know, something that they could stand by and something that is so nuanced that they need more evidence.
And I think this film is a good point from which people could start this conversation.
And that's what we're hoping will happen around the Thanksgiving table when we're tired of talking about impeachment.
Right, right, right.
So, Lynn, apart from seeing the film, and I want you to reiterate where people can see it, but at the moment, these kinds of programs are privately funded.
Where do you recommend I point people to put their shoulder to the wheel and help support work like we see in the film and has done through BPI and other programs?
Yes, thank you for asking that.
You know, I think that the Bard Prison Initiative, you can certainly be looking to contribute to that.
You can find the BPI, bardbpi.edu, I think is the place to find it on the web.
And I would also say that, you know, contacting our legislators and political leaders and saying that we are not happy with the status quo and that we want that to be changed and have public funding sent toward it.
And also, you know, as a graduate of an elite institution myself, I am...
I'm disappointed, to put it mildly, that Yale University, with its $30 billion endowment, can't see a way to do much in this space.
They have started a prison education program, as a few other schools like it have.
But to get started, they had to get a grant from BPI to get going.
They didn't see fit to put their own resources toward it.
And, you know, I think all of our elite institutions and public institutions of higher education also have a responsibility as, you know, civic institutions to find the best students, to expand their Access and to sort of fulfill their obligations to society so I think as you know anyone listening can Contact your alma mater see what they're doing and ask them why they're not doing more.
Hmm Well, Lynn and Jewel, it's been so great to get you on the program.
And again, I just need to insist that people see the film because this conversation is really not a substitute for that experience.
As nice as it was to speak to you both, watching the film really bowled me over.
So I just have to insist that this episode of the podcast really is just functioning as an infomercial for the film you've made, Lynn.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sam.
That's great.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Well, as I said, this whole thing is a commercial for Lynn's film, so please see it.
If you don't catch it live on PBS, please watch the streamed version and let it do its work on your brain.
Once again, all revenue associated with this episode of the podcast will be going to the Bard Prison Initiative.
I feel very happy and grateful to be in a position to make a decision like that, and it feels great to be inspired.
And thank you to Lynn and Jewel for the work they're doing, as well as Sarah and everyone else associated with this film, and everyone doing the work at BPI.
And to all of you in the U.S., I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving, and I'll see you back here on the podcast soon.
Until next time.
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