The Return

In the mid 1990s, California voters enacted one of the harshest criminal sentencing policies in the country, but almost two decades later, the tide turned, and the possibilities for reform were forever changed.

California's "Three Strikes" law imposed a life sentence for almost any crime, no matter how minor, if the defendant had two prior convictions for crimes deemed serious or violent. Today, more than half of inmates sentenced under the law are serving sentences for nonviolent crimes.

But, in 2012, through overwhelming citizen support, Proposition 36 marked the first time in U.S. history that citizens voted to shorten sentences of those currently incarcerated. Within days, the reintegration of thousands of "lifers" was underway.

The Return, a new film by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega, examines this unprecedented reform through the eyes of those on the front lines – prisoners suddenly

freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping to navigate complex transitions, and attorneys and judges wrestling with an untested law. At a moment of reckoning for our country's legacy of mass incarceration, what can California's experiment teach the rest of the nation?

Join New America and The Marshall Project for a screening of Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award winner The Return and a conversation on the unjust policies of the criminal justice system – and the movement to re-write them.

Participants:

Paul Keefe
Supervising Attorney, New York City Commission on Human Rights:
@pk

Katie Galloway 
Director, Producer, and Writer, The Return
@KatieGalloways

Kevin Bilal Chatman 
Campaign Representative and film subject, The Return Project
@kbilalchatman

Vivian D. Nixon
Executive Director, College and Community Fellowship
@feedingfaith

Ronald Day
Associate Vice President, David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy, The Fortune Society
@RonaldFDay

Beth Schwartzapfel 
Reporter, The Marshall Project
@schwartzapfel

Follow the conversation online using #TheReturnPBS and by following @NewAmericaNYC. This event is the kick-off screening of The Return Project's State(s) of Reform Screening Tour, a 10-city tour leading up to the national broadcast premiere of The Return on PBS's award-winning POV.