Please join us for an exclusive sneak-peek screening and discussion about the upcoming PBS documentary, College Behind Bars, airing on PBS this November.

Directed by Lynn Novick, produced by Sarah Botstein, and executive produced by Ken Burns, College Behind Bars takes viewers on a journey into one of the most pressing issues of our time – our failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for the millions of Americans living behind bars. The film follows incarcerated students as they attempt to earn college degrees in one of the country’s most rigorous prison education programs — the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) has been successful in breaking the cycle of recidivism through the power of higher education. In the 20 years since BPI began, more than 500 alumni have been released, and fewer than four percent have gone back into the system. Most of these people did not even finish high school yet, are earning degrees through the BPI program with the same standards as the undergraduates at Bard, a private liberal arts college in New York.

See and hear the transformative power of the BPI program and the lives of a dozen incarcerated men and women as they earn their degrees.