At Sing Sing prison, incarcerated men get preview of new PBS documentary on nation’s justice system

OSSINING, New York (AP) — As the lights dimmed inside the chapel at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, around 30 incarcerated men sat scattered across the pews, waiting to preview a new docuseries on the history of the nation’s criminal justice system. Our Lady of Hope chapel was soon abuzz with discussion, as some learned new things about an American institution with which they already have a great deal of personal experience. The four-part series, “Crime and Punishment in America,” is set to premiere Monday on PBS. It spends eight hours tracing how the justice system evolved, from the colonial period to present day, and viewers get to hear from legal scholars, formerly incarcerated people, victims’ families and corrections officers. The U.S. maintains the world’s largest incarcerated population, with nearly two million people behind bars in prisons and jails.

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