Degrees of Freedom

DIRS: Aisha X. Elliott, Cheryl Wilkins, Kathy Boudin, Jake Ratner
PRODS: Michelle Daniel Jones, Logan McBride

In the tough-on-crime 1990s, harsh laws eliminated college programs in American prisons. Refusing to accept this injustice, women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility determined to bring higher education back inside the prison walls. Their achievement became a widely emulated model, leading to thousands of incarcerated people earning diplomas. In Degrees of Freedom, the women narrate their powerful journey of organizing behind and through the bars of New York’s only maximum-security prison for women to create a transformative community of care —reclaiming their futures and challenging the narrative of who they are and what they can achieve.