Breaking the Cycle

The facts are startling: the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country on Earth. Those who fill the jails often come from fractured families with pernicious, multigenerational histories of poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence. Kids from such environments too often get in trouble. Incarcerated youth have a 75 percent chance of reoffending as adults and the cycle continues.

It is a terrible tragedy and a colossal waste of human lives and social resources. Breaking the Cycle, a documentary film now in preproduction, follows the lives of youthful offenders, highlighting a series of innnovative interventions that intensively counsel entire families, teaching coping and social strategies so at-risk teenagers don’t simply go back to circumstances and behaviors that lead them to offend again. The producers plan to combine the film with a social media campaign and still photography exhibit, which it is hoped can be a nucleus for locally-based civic engagement around this issue.