If you're arrested in New York City and can't make bail, you'll be sent to Rikers Island -- a mammoth holding facility for 17,000 men and women awaiting trial. TV journalist Jon Alpert spent ten months filming there, coming away with a graphic and unblinking portrait of life inside America's largest jail complex, including a moving look at the human faces behind the statistics.
Not for the faint of heart, this film tells the shocking (and true) story of some of the most notorious inmate slashings in New York City's infamous holding pen, Riker's Island. Documentary director Troy Reed trains his lens on the infamous correctional facility and explicitly captures some gruesome inmate slashings, police corruption and just plain survivin' that took place on the hardscrabble island during the late 1980s and early '90s.
The story of a teenager wrongfully charged with theft and jailed at Riker's Island prison for over 1,000 days.
