After the Island

A Fallout Pictures documentary

 

 

Last year, about 9 million people – a population the size of New Jersey – were released from jail. More than half of them will go back.

After the Island is a 60-minute documentary that examines how low-level offenders – an incarcerated population that nearly tripled in the ‘90s – struggle to piece their lives back together after serving a sentence at New York City’s Rikers Island. They are a group that’s mostly poor, uneducated and unskilled. And for decades, they have been systematically ignored.

Through the eyes of three inmates leaving Rikers Island, the film will examine what it’s like to try and make it on the outside of the world’s largest penal colony.

Rosalyn, a 44-year-old mother, grandmother, and heroin addict, served a two-month sentence at Rikers for shoplifting. She has been incarcerated ten times in the past 15 years, including a stint in state prison on felony drug charges. Hoping to lean on family as she confronts the demons of her own addiction, Rosalyn faces a common challenge among many Rikers Island inmates, 75 percent of who are incarcerated on drug-related charges. With no permanent housing, no job, and no money, Rosalyn’s chances of failure – whether succumbing to drugs again, or returning to prison – are astronomical.

Allen is a small-time hustler who’s been locked up time and again for dealing drugs. After completing a nine-month sentence for violating parole, he hopes to find a straight job and to steer clear of the alcohol and drugs that have helped to put him behind bars. With a supportive family and a place to call home, Allen is one of the lucky ones.

Most prisoners, including our third character (yet to be identified) are released from Rikers on a squalid street corner in Queens in the middle of the night, with a paper bag full of their belongings and a subway card. Throughout the film, this gritty intersection of overhead subway lines, pot-holed roadways, and drug dealers serves as a potent symbol of the grim reality facing newly released prisoners.

Many social workers say this is a make-it-or-break-it time for ex-offenders, many of who are jobless, homeless and broke. In New York City, 130,000 inmates leave Rikers and hit the streets each year, most returning to just a handful of low-income neighborhoods. Here they’re free to reunite with their loved ones, to try to find a job, or to return to a life of crime. But in these deeply depressed districts, where economic and social prospects are grim, the latter outcome is alarmingly common. Three-quarters of them will be back behind bars within a year.

Meanwhile, misdemeanor incarcerations have reached epidemic proportions and low-level offenders account for over two-thirds of those who are locked up. And the few re-entry programs that have emerged in recent years reach only a fraction of those behind bars, leaving the vast majority to fend for themselves.

So the cycle continues. Using archival footage, we’ll trace the rise of low-level incarcerations in America’s jail and prison systems. From the infamous 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws to California’s controversial three strikes laws, to the “get tough” legislation that has now passed in over 20 states, we’ll investigate why jail terms have skyrocketed while national non-violent crime rates remain stable. As the film juxtaposes this footage with its characters’ lives, the audience will gain an understanding of how this country’s system of incarceration remains deeply flawed.

Interlacing this historical perspective with emotionally compelling verité footage of Rosalyn, Allen and our other characters, we’ll immerse ourselves in the gritty, real-life struggles of the newly released. The result will be a raw yet intimate look at what it takes to survive After the Island.