Human Rights Watch Film Fest in Boston
Folks,
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is going to be in Boston this coming weekend. Please note there are two films being shown that would be of interest to supporters, volunteers and staff of Prison Book Program. Here are the descriptions from this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix:
Rivaling suspected terrorists as personae non gratae are juvenile offenders. Surely the country grows safer when underage offenders are tried, convicted, and sentenced as adults for major felonies? Not only is that untrue, argues documentarian Leslie Neale in Juvies (2004; January 29 at 5 and 7 p.m., January 30 at 8 p.m., and February 1 at 9 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with filmmakers Leslie Neale and Traci Odom present at the January 29 and 30 screenings), but this get-tough system has resulted in grotesque injustices. With voiceover narration from former juvie Mark Wahlberg, the film intercuts the fates of a handful of youths undergoing trial and sentencing with observations from experts and officials. Sixteen-year-old Duc, for example, was driving a car when a passenger in it shot at someone. No one was hurt, yet with no prior record and no gang ties, Duc got 35 years hard time. His case is typical. "It is a slow genocide," one spokesman concludes.
That remark could apply equally to the situation described in Katy Chevigny & Kirsten Johnson’s documentary Deadline (2003; January 30 at 12:30 and 6 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre). Back in 2002, outgoing Illinois governor George Ryan, a conservative Republican, shocked the country by ordering an investigation into his state’s capital punishment system. The inequities and errors uncovered moved him to order a blanket commutation of all death-row cases to life imprisonment. The filmmakers chronicle the anguish and the soul searching behind Ryan’s decision, and they give equal time to the harrowing testimony of victims’ families and the tales of narrow escapes and ruined lives of those wrongly sentenced to death. They put this raw material in the context of the recent history of capital punishment and commentary mostly by anti-death-penalty spokespersons. The conclusion? The death penalty kills innocent people, demoralizes the justice system, and provides no deterrent. "Let’s offer victims something other than revenge," says Ryan as he makes the final commutation official. Fat chance that other pols might follow in his footsteps. Ryan was, after all, leaving office the same day. And as Deadline reminds us, in 1992, Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Bill Clinton executed a retarded man so as not to appear soft on crime.
