The Worst of the Worst: A film on human rights and legal issues of solitary confinement
559 Nathan Abbott Way,Stanford University,
Produced by the Yale Law School Visual Law Project, this film explores the conditions and impact of solitary confinement in a Connecticut maximum security prison. Interviews with administrators and experts are interwoven with the powerful stories of inmates and correctional officers who spend their days within the walls. Over 25,000 prisoners in the U.S. are held in isolation, typically spending 22.5 hours a day in a tiny cell, the other 1.5 hour exercising alone. Many are kept this way for years. At California's Pelican Bay, where 1,200 men are in high-tech solitary, inmates have recently been on hunger strike to protest the conditions of their confinement.
For more information about the film, visit the movie's website.
Valarie Kaur is a 2003 Stanford graduate, 2012 Yale Law graduate, and founder of the Yale Visual Law Project. After majoring in Religious Studies and International Relations at Stanford, she went to Harvard Divinity School for a master's degree in Theological Studies. She was the main speaker at Stanford's 2013 Baccalaureate ceremony. She wrote and produced the award-winning film Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath.
Sharat Raju, a graduate of the American Film Institute, was a co-founder of the Yale University Visual Law Project. He has directed a number of independent films and more than twenty international awards. A 2012-13 NBC Universal Directing Fellow, he is currently directing Story of a Girl, on the lives of people living with HIV in India.