Related Guides
Exhibit Sources: Primary Sources
- Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 This link opens in a new window Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 is an archive comprising more than 2 million pages. It contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, some of the printed matter very scarce. The archive unites a number of geographic areas, reflecting the widespread impact of the changes in crime and its policing during the long nineteenth century. The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes.
Exhibit Sources: News
- PressReader This link opens in a new window Full-page images and article images with searchable full text of international newspapers and magazines from the last 90 days, in the original language. Includes computer-generated translations to English and other languages for some publications.
- International Newsstream This link opens in a new window International, searchable, full text coverage of selected newspapers. (Text only; does not include images, charts.) Date coverage: 1977 - present.
- Access World News This link opens in a new window Find full-text current and archived articles on issues, events, people, government and more. Includes local news, editorials, announcements and other sections from more than 10,000 sources.
- Boston Globe 1980+ This link opens in a new window Date coverage: 1980 - present. Searchable, current article text from the Boston Globe (no images, illustrations or charts included). For earlier editions use Boston Globe (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
- Boston [Sunday] Globe (PressReader) Full-page images of the Sunday Boston Globe, current six weeks.
- Boston Globe (PressReader) Full-page images of current six weeks of the Monday-Saturday Boston Globe and 10/16/2003 until 03/01/2016.
- ProQuest Recent Newspapers This link opens in a new window Searchable digital archive of recent newspapers that offers full-page images of Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Date coverage: 2008 to 2 months ago.
- Vanderbilt Television News Archive This link opens in a new window Streaming video of news and commercials from NBC and CNN plus searchable archive of abstracts of news broadcasts from ABC, CBS, Fox News, and other channels . Date coverage: NBC video 1968 - present; CNN video 1995 - present.
- LIFE Magazine Archive Searchable archive of LIFE Magazine issues from 1936 to 1972.
Exhibit Sources: Film
Search for Films & Film Scripts
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
- Film Scripts Online (Volume I: American Film Scripts) This link opens in a new window Contains more than a thousand scripts together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. In addition, the database includes facsimile images for more than 500 of these screenplays. Supplemental information includes short biographies on the writers and awards given to individual films have been noted.
Browse Feature Films
- Cool Hand Luke (dvd) Paul Newman plays the feature role of Luke, serving time on a chain gang, in this film directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Co-author Donn Pearce spent two years of his own life on a chain gang, which adds authenticity to the story.
- The Shawshank Redemption (streaming, Swank) "Red" Redding is a lifer who knows the ropes at Maine's Shawshank State Prison. New inmate Andy Dufresne is a quiet banker, unjustly convicted of murder. Andy's indomitable will earns Red's friendship and his resourcefulness brings hope and change to the entire prison. Andy is full of surprises--and he saves his best surprise for last.
- Orange is the New Black: Season 3 (dvd) A new regime has arrived at Litchfield and with it comes new business interests, spiritual movements, and parental problems that turn life behind bars upside down and ignite power struggles among Litchfield's residents and guards.
- The Big House (dvd) Wallace Beery plays the consummate tough guy in this classic prison drama. Rage and violence are inevitable when 3000 prisoners share a space built for only 1800.
- The Rock (dvd) Deranged military man Ed Harris and his followers take over Alcatraz Island and threaten to launch rockets loaded with deadly nerve gas on San Francisco. FBI biochemical expert Nicolas Cage teams with federal prisoner Sean Connery, the only man to ever escape from "the Rock," to break into the impenetrable prison and stop Harris.
- American History X (dvd) This controversial drama, directed by Tony Kaye, about the consequences of racism stars Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Edward Furlong, Fairuza Balk, Beverley D'Angelo, Elliott Gould, and Avery Brooks. In the wake of his father's murder, Derek Vinyard (Norton) finds himself overcome by feelings of hate and rage, and he turns to a local white supremicist (Keach) as a mentor, ending up in prison for a brutal murder. Three years later, ashamed of his past and pledging to reform himself, he finds that his younger brother Danny (Furlong) is following in his footsteps
- Brute Force (dvd) A prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey (a riveting Hume Cronyn). Only Collins's dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains? Matter
- I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (dvd) Paul Muni stars as a drifter sentenced to 10 years hard labor on a Georgia chain gang. After escaping, he builds a new life in Chicago before he is recaptured and sent back to face punishment.
- The Defiant Ones (dvd) THE DEFIANT ONES, directed by Stanley Kramer, broke new ground by getting its message of racial tolerance across through a fast-moving blend of action and suspense. Joker Jackson (Tiny Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) are two convicts on the run. Escaping from a Southern work gang, they are bound together by an unbreakable iron chain and separated by an unbridled hatred towards the other.
- Dead Man Walking (dvd) Tim Robbins' drama is based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean, whose contact with condemned prisoners transformed her into an advocate against the death penalty.
- Black Mama, White Mama (dvd) Two female prisoners chained together - one black (Pam Grier) and one white (Margaret Markov) - escape from a Latin American prison and are on the run from police, gangsters, and guerillas. An example of "blaxploitation", based on a story by Joseph Viola and Jonathan Demme.
- The Green Mile (dvd) Tom Hanks stars in director Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novel about a death row guard who encounters an inmate with miraculous healing powers.
- Hell's House (dvd) Bootlegger Pat O'Brien lets teenage assistant Junior Durkin take the rap during a police raid and get sent to a brutal reform school in this two-fisted Prohibition drama that features an early appearance by Bette Davis as Durkin's girlfriend.
- Sleepers (dvd) Writer/director Barry Levinson's adaptation of the best-selling book follows four young boys from New York's Hell's Kitchen in the '60s who are sent to reform school and assaulted by a sadistic guard. Two decades later, the four-a writer, a pair of criminals, and an assistant D.A.-launch an elaborate plan of revenge.
- Con Air (vhs) Newly paroled ex-con and former US Ranger Cameron Poe finds himself trapped in a prisoner transport plane when the passengers seize control.
Browse Documentary Films
- Incarceration Nation (streaming, Academic Video Online) The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of our population than any other nation - nearly 2.4 million Americans are behind bars, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $63 billion a year. Correspondent Martha Teichner looks into how that bleak statistic came about, and at efforts being made to change this.
- New Gulag (streaming, Academic Video Online) In the United States there are five thousand prisons and one and a half million prisoners. The prison system already costs thirty billion dollars per year to maintain and will escalate as stiffer sentences and tougher treatment are being demanded for criminals. Some estimate that half of all Americans will be incarcerated by the year 2050. This hard-hitting film shows that building and maintaining prisons has become an industry. Private companies are running them for profit often at the expense of any amenities such as recreation and rehabilitation services.
- Prison lullabies (streaming, Academic Video Online) Prison Lullabies is the remarkable portrait of four women living on the bad side of luck, struggling with drug addiction, arrested for dealing and prostitution and serving prison time with one common bond: they are pregnant. Amy, Monique, Joann and Ann Marie -- they all have given birth behind bars. For these women who are on intimate terms with sexual abuse, poverty and addiction, the Taconic Correctional Facility in New York State offers a rare gleam of hope. One of only five prisons in the U.S. to provide a nursery program for inmates,
- The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (streaming, Academic Video Online) In this remarkable documentary, filmmaker Brett Story excavates the often unseen links and connections that prisons – and our system of mass incarceration – have on communities and industries all around us. Widely acclaimed, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is an essential documentary, a portrait of our criminal justice system in which we never see a penitentiary.
- Belly of the Beast (streaming, Alexander Street Press) When a courageous young woman and a radical lawyer discover a pattern of illegal sterilizations in California's women's prisons, they wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. With a growing team of investigators inside prison working with colleagues on the outside, they uncover a series of statewide crimes -- from inadequate health care to sexual assault to coercive sterilizations -- primarily targeting women of color. This shocking legal drama captured over 7-years features extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, demanding attention to a shameful and ongoing legacy of eugenics and reproductive injustice in the United States.
- The Human Stories Behind Mass Incarceration (TED Talk) The United States locks up more people than any other country in the world, says documentarian Eve Abrams, and somewhere between one and four percent of those in prison are likely innocent. That's 87,000 brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers -- predominantly African American -- unnecessarily separated from their families, their lives and dreams put on hold. Using audio from her interviews with incarcerated people and their families, Abrams shares touching stories of those impacted by mass incarceration and calls on us all to take a stand and ensure that the justice system works for everyone.
- Prison Town, USA (streaming, Academic Video Online) In the 1990s, at the height of the prison-building boom, a prison opened in rural America every 15 days. "Prison Town, USA" tells the story of Susanville, California, one small town that tries to resuscitate its economy by building a prison — with unanticipated consequences.
- Solitary Confinement (streaming, Academic Video Online) The first-ever comprehensive investigation of the subject reveals what life is like for the 10% of inmates who serve their sentences in isolation. Today's penal system is in flux, as new theories of confinement, new technologies and a rising tide of convicts combine to change the way America handles prisoners.
- When the Bough Breaks-- Children of Women in Prison (streaming, Academic Video Online) hat happens to children when their mothers are incarcerated? In prisons throughout the United States, 80% of all female inmates are incarcerated for non-violent offenses, and 80% are mothers of vulnerable children. This sensitive documentary is an up -close look at children coping with their mother's incarcerations.
- Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica (streaming, Academic Video Online) In September of 1971, the infamous prison rebellion began at the Attica State Correctional Facility in upstate New York—a dramatic civil rights protest that ended with Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordering more than 600 state troopers to storm the prison and retake it with force.
- Frontline: Prison State (streaming, Academic Video Online) Prison State takes an intimate look at the cycle of mass incarceration in America and a statewide effort to reverse the trend, following four residents of a housing project in Louisville, KY. as they cycle in and out of jail and prison.
- The Last Graduation (streaming, Kanopy) Researcher Barbara Zahm gives a brief history of the 1971 Attica Prison Rebellion in which forty-three men died, and the college prison program which was initiated afterward. After interviews with prison inmates, "The Movement for College Programs of New York State Prisons After Attica" was formed. Zahm tells of her transformation after working with the inmates and her anguish over the Congressional decision to eliminate Pell Grants for prisoners, thus ending the program and leading to the "Last Graduation". As of 1997 funding cuts had not been restored.
- The Worst of the Worst (streaming, Yale Visual Law Project) The Worst of the Worst: Portrait of a Supermax Prison depicts Connecticut’s sole supermax prison, where many inmates are held in solitary confinement for months and even years at a time. Hard-hitting interviews with a range of experts and administrators are interwoven with the powerful stories of those who spend their days within the walls of Northern: inmates and correctional officers.
- Mass Incarceration: How Racial Inequality Shapes Criminal Justice (Youtube) EJI is pleased to release this complete video of Mass Incarceration: How Racial Inequality Shapes Criminal Justice, which was recorded during our Peace and Justice Summit in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26.
- The Throwaways (streaming, Academic Video Online) THE THROWAWAYS is a personal exploration of the devastating impact of police brutality and mass incarceration on the black community, told through the eyes of formerly incarcerated activist Ira McKinley.
- The Angola 3 black panthers and the last slave plantation (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary by Jimmy O'Halligan tells the gripping story of Robert King Wilkerson, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, men who have endured solitary confinement longer then any known living prisoner in the United States
- Ghost Hunting (streaming, Academic Video Online) In order to confront the ghosts that haunt him, Palestinian director Raed Andoni assembles an eclectic group of ex-prisoners to build a replicate of Al-Moskobiya, Israel’s main interrogation center, where he was himself jailed at age 18. From fragmentary memory, day after day, they give shape to the interrogation center they all experienced, and re-enact its stories. As the walls of the cells rise, the tongues and the emotions loosen.
- Brides of Allah (streaming, Academic Video Online) There is no black or white in this film, only painful shades of gray. Israeli director Natalie Assouline chronicles the lives of women who are serving time in prison for involvement in terrorist attacks in Israel.
- Prison through art, rap and VR (streaming, Academic Video Online) “State Property” is a Bronx-based art exhibition that looks at the American consumerism of prison labor.
Exhibit Sources: Podcasts & Radio
- Inside Wire: Colorado Prison Radio Inside Wire: Colorado Prison Radio beams music, stories, information, and entertainment into prisons across Colorado… and broadcasts its sounds to listeners outside facilities as well, across the U.S. and beyond. Our programs are created by incarcerated media producers for incarcerated listeners. Inside Wire is a program of the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative, in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Corrections. It's the first statewide prison radio station in
- Criminalized Created by a BU student, Criminalized is a podcast that examines issues in the American criminal justice system through the narratives of formerly incarcerated people. This podcast brings together the perspectives of court-involved people, community organizers, policy experts, and academics to explain the drivers of mass incarceration in the United States. Criminalized is based in Boston, MA and focuses on the experiences of people in the Massachusetts criminal legal system.
- Ear Hustle The Ear Hustle team works in the San Francisco Bay Area, both in San Quentin State Prison’s media lab and from offices on the outside, to produce stories that are sometimes difficult, often funny and always honest. Episodes offer a nuanced view of people involved with the American prison system and those reintegrating into society after serving time.
- Caught Mass incarceration starts young. These kids say the system changes them forever.
- The Appeal: Justice in America Justice In America is hosted by Josie Duffy Rice, president of The Appeal, along with guest hosts Darnell Moore, Donovan X. Ramsey, Derecka Purnell, and Zak Cheney Rice. Each episode explains a new criminal justice issue and features conversations with experts and advocates.
- Life of a Lifer This podcast tells the world about what happens to those serving long terms in prison, about those serving life sentences without parole, how they got there, what they are doing in there and what motivates them to keep on living for a better tomorrow.
- Wrongful Conviction Based on the files of the lawyers who freed them, Wrongful Conviction features interviews with men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit – some of them had even been sentenced to death. These are their stories.
- Live from D Block Live from D block is a prison based podcast, hosted by Ezekiel Thomas who has been incarcerated for 27 years.
- PEN America Works of Justice Works of Justice is an online series that features content connected to the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program, reflecting on the relationship between writing and incarceration, and presenting challenging conversations about criminal justice in the United States.
- NPR Throughline: Mass Incarceration The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and a disproportionate number of those prisoners are Black. What are the origins of the U.S. criminal justice system and how did racism shape it? From the creation of the first penitentiaries in the 1800s, to the "tough-on-crime" prosecutors of the 1990s, how America created a culture of mass incarceration.
- Notes from the Pen A pebble in the shoe of the Prison Industrial Complex. Notes From The Pen is a modern portrait of American incarceration told, in real time, through a series of fifteen-minute phone calls between two special degenerates on opposite sides of a prison wall.
Exhibit Sources: Images
- Art from Guantánamo Bay Detainees began to make art almost as soon as they arrive at the United States military prison camp known as Guantánamo Bay. The exhibit displays nearly a hundred of these evocative works, made by six men, all of whom have since been cleared for release, although two remain in detention, waiting for the slow process of release.
- Camp Album Project: Art to Fight Xinjiang Abuse Camp Album project is a multimedia platform envisioned as a way for people from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to express their feelings in a safe and anonymous way while raising awareness of the ongoing human rights abuse and cultural genocide that confronts Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim minorities in the region. This site aims to document lived experience, trauma, and resistance through art.
- Capitalizing on Justice: An Art Exhibit Featuring Incarcerated Artists Capitalizing on Justice features the works of incarcerated artists from across the nation who have used their talents to express the ways they and their loved ones have been commodified.
- Associated Press Images Collection This link opens in a new window Associated Press Images Collection is a searchable collection of recent and historical photos from the Associated Press, plus AP graphics, articles, and brief sound clips.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new window ARTstor is a database of images from museums, artists, libraries, colleges and universities, scholars, private collections, and photo archives available for teaching, education, and scholarship, with all images cleared for educational use.
- Creative Commons Image Search Use this prototype to find images that you can use and remix across several open archives.
- LIFE Picture Collection The LIFE Picture Collection is the visual chronicle of the 20th century and one of the most important photographic archives in the United States.
Exhibit Sources: Theater
- Black Drama: African, African American, and Diaspora 1850 to Present. This link opens in a new window Black Drama: Second Edition contains plays, including previously unpublished or unperformed ones, by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Date coverage: Mid-1800s -present.
- Asian American Drama This link opens in a new window Asian American Drama contains plays by writers of Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese descent; and of Hawaiian, Indian, Thai, Korean, Persian, and Malaysian ancestry. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Date coverage: late 19th century - present.
- North American Indian Drama This link opens in a new window Includes plays by American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the 20th century, information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. Also includes issues of the Native Playwrights' Newsletter.
- North American Women's Drama This link opens in a new window North American Women's Drama includes the texts of plays, and information on productions, theaters, and production companies. Date coverage: 1700s - present.
- Twentieth Century North American Drama This link opens in a new window Twentieth Century North American Drama contains 2,000 plays—along with detailed information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more—from the late 1800s to the present by more than 300 playwrights from North America.
Exhibit Sources: Prison Blogs, Writings & Newspapers
- American Prison Writing Archive The mission of the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA) is to replace misrepresentation of prisons and imprisoned people with first-person witness by those living in legalized confinement.
- American Prison Newspapers, 1800s-present: Voices from the Inside (JSTOR) On March 24, 1800, Forlorn Hope was published within a prison in New York state, edited by an incarcerated person. In the intervening 200+ years, over 700 prison newspapers have been published from U.S. prisons in all fifty states. American Prison Newspapers will bring together hundreds of these periodicals from across the country into one collection that will represent penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women-only institutions.
- Posted from Behind Prison Walls William D. Hastings is the pen name of an inmate–one of over 2,200,000 people currently incarcerated in the United States.
- Between the Bars Between the Bars is a weblog platform for people in prison, through which the 1% of America which is behind bars can tell their stories. Since people in prison are routinely denied access to the Internet, we enable them to blog by scanning letters.
- Minutes Before Six Our Mission: “to give a voice to those silenced through incarceration” To achieve this, we facilitate a publicly-accessible, online platform that displays the contributions of many talented inmates. We provide incarcerated individuals with the opportunity to creatively express themselves and allow them the chance to feel connected to the free world by knowing their works are shared with the public.
- Life Inside (The Marshall Project) Learn about life inside from those that interact with the system. Our weekly series is written by people who live or work in the criminal justice system.
- Prison Diaries Often called the ‘new’ Orange Is the New Black, Chandra Bozelko is a writer and thought leader on all issues related to criminal justice reform. As a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University who was in the middle of post-graduate study (law and public health) when she was arrested, Chandra was an unlikely inmate. She served more than six years at the York Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s only state women’s prison, for non-violent crimes that
- Prison Writers When we started Prison Writers, we had no idea it would become a lifeline for so many of our writers. We’ve received dozens and dozens of letters from prisoners thanking us for giving them a sense of purpose, something they thought they’d never find again. They love knowing someone on the outside cares about them and their message.
Exhibit Sources: Statistics
- World Prison Brief Provides information about prison systems throughout the world. It enables more evidence-based discussion of ways to improve prison systems in accordance with international human rights standards. In each country page information is provided on prison populations and prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population, on the use of imprisonment for women and juveniles, on the extent of pre-trial imprisonment and on prison overcrowding, as well as a record of the national ministries
- Prison Policy Initiative Data Toolbox All of our reports and many of our briefings compile previously unavailable or incompatible data. For the benefit of other advocates and researchers who want to do new things with our data, we’ve compiled our unique datasets on this page.
- World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country (Prison Policy Initiative) Not only does the U.S. have the highest incarceration rate in the world; every single U.S. state incarcerates more people per capita than virtually any independent democracy on earth. To be sure, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive in their incarceration rates compared to states like Louisiana, but compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime.
