Where Justice Ends

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TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: In Distribution

LOGLINE

Where Justice Ends is at the intersection of two important and timely topics of social justice — conditions within the U.S. prison system and the injustices that befall transgender people encountering the law.  Where Justice Ends looks into why so many transgender people encounter the police, how those encounters often lead to discriminatory treatment, and the inhumane conditions that transgender people all too frequently experience.

Told through the words of transgender inmates and experts, and narrated by the Tony award-winning stage, screen and TV actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, Where Justice Ends casts a light on one of the most hidden social injustices in our country.

SYNOPSIS

Where Justice Ends is at the intersection of two important and timely topics of social justice — conditions within the U.S. prison system and the injustices that befall transgender people encountering the law.  The staggering conditions at the center of this film are largely invisible to many.  Perhaps nowhere else do the inequities of our criminal incarceration fall more heavily than the on the transgender community.

Where Justice Ends looks into why so many transgender people encounter the police, how those encounters often lead to discriminatory treatment, and the inhumane conditions that transgender people all too frequently experience.  The film examines how high unemployment of transgender people, family rejection and homelessness contribute to staggering rates of incarceration.  One of every 6 transgender persons is likely to be incarcerated at some point in their lives, and nearly one of every two black transgender people will be similarly incarcerated.

In the late 1980s, one transgender woman refused to endure continual abuse, assault and rape in prison.  As explored by Where Justice Ends, her struggle lead to the most significant ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court requiring humane conditions treatment of all prisoners.  As the film discovers, little has improved in the nearly 25 intervening years until today.

Told through the words of transgender inmates and experts, Where Justice Ends casts a light on one of the most hidden social injustices in our country.  The film is narrated by the Tony award-winning stage, screen and TV actor Brian Stokes Mitchell.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

As a film director and editor, I have always been drawn to projects addressing important social justice issues.  I have embraced the opportunity to work on timely issues critical to the well-being of diverse people, from the award-winning documentary China’s Abandoned Babies, and continuing to the present with the critically-important Where Justice Ends.  Before coming to this project, I had virtually no understanding that transgender women were frequently incarcerated for petty survival crimes, typically in male prisons.  While working on Where Justice Ends, I learned of the inhumane conditions befalling transgender people — people who suffer discrimination and hardships simply for expressing the identities they were born with. As the film progressed, I was increasingly horrified to learn of the abuse that transgender people endure on a daily basis in prisons across the United States.

Survival crimes by some transgender people can result in frequent encounters with our legal system, and lack of understanding and prejudice often leads to unconscionably high rates of incarceration of transgender people.  Prisons can be inhumane places, and the full weight of those conditions frequently falls heavily on transgender people.  I hope this film will help our society to better understand what is hidden to many, and ultimately help, at least in a small way, to shape the course of our future for the better.  Edward G. Norris

KEY CREW

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