PBS NewsHour documentary explores the challenges of life after incarceration

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• Judy Woodruff:

  More than 70 million Americans have an arrest or criminal record, and, in many cases, that prevents them from getting housing, work and reconnecting with their families after incarceration.

  Those challenges are the subject of a "NewsHour" documentary premiering tonight on PBS called "Searching For Justice: Life After Lockup."

  It is produced by our Mike Fritz and Frank Carlson and hosted by Amna Nawaz.

  Here's a quick look.

• Michael Plummer, Former Inmate:

  So, I was released on February 10, 2020. And it was like around 7:00.

  (CHEERING)

• Michael Plummer:

  And when I get to the door, the first person I see is my daughter. It was surreal.

• Amna Nawaz:

  After more than two decades in prison, Michael Plummer is released under a Washington, D.C., law that allows some prisoners who committed crimes as juveniles to be freed early.

• Michael Plummer:

  I was just thinking, I'm finally free. What is the next step in my life?

  You got to get a birth certificate. You got to get a Social Security card. So, I was gone for 23 years. So, and my — and both parents passed away. So, these documents was lost. So, I had to go and get them again.

  This felony is — it's over the top of your head, right, not having an established credit long enough, so I'm not able to go and purchase a house or get the assistance I need. It is just always a burden. They are letting you know that you made a mistake, and, for this mistake, that these burdens are going to be placed in front of you.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And Amna joins me now.

  Amna, you were telling us you have been reporting on issues around incarceration for years. What is it that you were trying to capture with this documentary?

• Amna Nawaz:

  Judy, you're absolutely right. And you know better than anyone our entire "NewsHour" has been covering stories around incarceration for years.

  But stories of incarceration are actually more familiar to Americans than many people know. I mean, one out of every two Americans has a loved one or knows someone who's been incarcerated. But, oftentimes, those incarceration stories are about life inside prison or about the time that the person gets out.

  For most formerly incarcerated people, the day they get out is the beginning of their story. That's when a vast array and a web of problems and issues arise. And so that's what we wanted to look into, along with our colleagues producers Mike Fritz and Frank Carlson, who are the driving forces behind this documentary. That's where we wanted to focus.

  The U.S. locks up more people than any other country in the world; 600,000 people get out every year. They did their time. Now they're free. Now what?

  So we look at the lives of four people to try to answer that question.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, tell us a little bit about some of the people you follow, the kind of hurdles they encountered when they were out of prison, and we should say a lot of this during the pandemic.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That's right.

  Well, we just heard from one of those people, Michael Plummer. He was just a kid, Judy, when he was incarcerated, he was 17. He was convicted for murder. And he wasn't released until he was a 40-year-old man. And one thing he said really stuck with me. He said: "I feel like I will always be in some kind of incarceration, even though I'm free."

  And what he was talking about was, even when you get out ,on the outside, you are met with this system, more than 40,000 laws and rules and regulations that really limit how formerly incarcerated people can work and move and stay even with their own family members, how they can parent, how they can even try to find footing and reconnect with family and communities and all those support networks that we all need.

  So, Michael is now working two jobs. He's really trying to cobble his life together, trying to reconnect with a daughter who was just a baby when he went into prison and his new granddaughter.

  You will meet another man named Michael Cevallo, who really tried hard after he was first incarcerated as a teenager as well to stay out, but every time found a problem, trying to get a job, finding stable housing, and ended up back in prison. He's now been incarcerated for more than his life than he's been free.

  You will meet a woman named Rachel Schuyler, who had an incredibly abusive and traumatic childhood. She lost custody of one of her children during her last conviction and is now fighting to get her daughter back.

  And you will also meet a woman named Renee Wyatt, who is kind of the exception to the rule, in that she got out and she stayed out. And she is now trying to counsel other formerly incarcerated women to make sure they stay out too.

  But, Judy, this sociologist we talk to, a man named Reuben Jonathan Miller, says it best. He says, the system really does try to keep people from making their way back into society.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And you were telling us, Amna, you also looked at their backgrounds, the kinds of things that led them to be incarcerated in the first place.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That's right, Judy.

  We had long, intimate conversations with them. We talked about the fact that every single one of them had a parent who was incarcerated or had struggled with addiction at some point. And that's the data come to life.

  We know that people who grow up with a parent incarcerated are more likely themselves to be incarcerated. And our system does more to reinforce some of those patterns than to break them.

  So, we hope that people will watch. We hope they will get to know some of these people to better understand how the system works, and to maybe ask the question if the system can and should be better than it is.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, shining a light into an area that gets so little attention.

  Amna Nawaz, we are really looking forward to seeing this.

  The documentary is called "Searching For Justice: Life After Lockup." It airs tonight at 10:00 Eastern/9:00 Central on PBS.

  Very much looking forward to seeing that.