Charging a social movement.

Overview

Brooklyn Defender Services and Friends create a provocative narrative about District Attorney’s power to “de-fuck” the criminal justice system.

Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is a public defender organization that provides legal support and related services to nearly 40,000 people a year who are too poor to afford it. As part of a larger strategy to end mass incarceration, BDS and Friends created a film that highlights the power and responsibility elected officials have to fix the criminal justice system.

People are familiar with what happens at the beginning of the process (crime and policing) as well as what happens at the end (jail, etc.), but what happens in the middle (after cops, before judges) has been a mystery to the public until recently.

Our film exposes the power of prosecutors, the levers they pull to keep the broken criminal justice system functioning as-is, and ultimately their ability and responsibility to fix it.

It features influential activists, organizers, and thinkers like Deray McKesson, Josie Duffy Rice, Nina Morrison, and Baratunde Thurston. It had an organic reach of well over 10 million people thanks to the support of folks like Ava Duvernay, John Legend, Jesse Williams, the ACLU, and Washington Post.

Following the release of the film, we were thrilled to find out that it’s being used as part of training for Court Watch NYC, the latest in a growing number of local volunteer court monitoring programs.