A Chicago-based filmmaker and the subject of his latest documentary will be in Galesburg on Friday to kick off this year’s Galesburg Community Read.
The theme for this year's Community Read is justice and incarceration. During the month of April, the community will be reading “Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change” by Ben Austen, which looks at parole in the American criminal-legal system through the stories of two men who are imprisoned for murder.
“In Their Hands,” a documentary by Dan Protess, focuses on the politics of parole in Illinois.
The film tells the story of Ronnie Carrasquillo, who was sentenced to 200-600 years in prison after being convicted of killing an off-duty Chicago police officer at age 18.
Protess said Carrasquillo’s attorneys approached him about doing the film several years ago, after Carrasquillo had been rejected for parole 30 times.
“Then I got to meet his family and just found them to be incredibly compelling. So often people are incarcerated for long sentences and their family begin to abandon them or die off, especially after, in his case, 47 years. His family continued to stick with him year after year for almost 50 years,” Protess said.
Protess’ work has often explored issues in the criminal-legal system, but this was his first foray into covering the quasi-judicial Illinois Prisoner Review Board.
“The extent to which much of their decision-making seems to be arbitrary, at least in Ronnie’s case, and divorced from any rules of evidence that you might ordinarily use in a courtroom, was shocking to me,” Protess said.
There are many stories out there about wrongful convictions, but that’s not what Carrasquillo’s story is. He has always fully admitted that he is guilty.
Protess’ film instead asks, at what point has he rehabilitated himself? And how does society decide what extent of rehabilitation makes Carrasquillo fit for release?
“The Illinois State Constitution quite clearly says that the purpose of punishment is to restore the offender to useful citizenship,” Protess said. “If there's one larger question we've been raising as we've been out there talking about the film, it's about have we as a state created this system that is really about rehabilitation and about restoring people to useful citizenship, or is it a punitive system?”
A free screening of “In Their Hands” is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday, April 4 in the Community Room of the Galesburg Public Library.
Protess and Carrasquillo will be there to speak with the audience and answer questions.
Limited copies of the non-fiction book “Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change” by Ben Austen, will also be available. The book looks at parole in the American criminal-legal system through the stories of two men who are imprisoned for murder.
This year’s Community Read is made possible by an Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities.
Events are planned throughout the month, in partnership with Galesburg Community Arts Center.
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