The project seeks to explore the internal and external worlds of today’s incarcerated population while tracing the narratives of the many on the outside whose lives are enmeshed in the criminal legal system.

Through twelve-years of filming with corrections staff, district attorneys, public defenders, those incarcerated at the prison, and their family members, American Purgatory reveals a rarely-seen well-rounded, human perspective to America’s carceral system in a media landscape rife with stereotypes and oversimplification.