A Hard Straight: One Arm Productions

Journal of Correctional Education, Jun 2005 by Lanz, Tim

A Hard Straight

One Arm Productions

There must be some criminal justice professionals who are past the saturation point in digesting the mountains of sterile statistics and research results currently available on crime and corrections. For these folks, this documentary should prove to be a tonic. A cautionary note here - the tonic may not go down smoothly.

Goro Toshima's thoughtful film paints a very personal picture of life on parole in the State of California. Wisely, Toshima employs no charts, graphs, or statistics in his film to create this picture. Rather, he chooses to intimately involve himself in the lives of three disparate offenders exiting California prisons. His film crew follows these three individuals for many months, profiling in great detail their sputtering attempts to connect to life in the free community. In the process, he successfully creates a very real, multidimensional picture of these offenders, and the unique world in which each lives. No snap shot statistics here. Just three real people trying to navigate through life, with their hopes, fears and pathologies captured on film.

* Regina is a 44 year old offender completing her second stay in prison for forgery and receiving stolen property. She is being released to San Francisco, to reunite with her three children, who are living independently. Her final days in prison and her return to live with her three children is an emotional roller coaster ride for all parties. That ride is vastly complicated by Regina's unresolved chemical abuse issues. The family fabric is strained to the breaking point as Regina is forced to confront her chemical abuse.

* Richard Martinez is a 32 year old Latino gang member, just finishing 7-1/2 years in prison for kidnap/robbery. He was not a prison success case, spending his final year in solitary confinement for misbehavior. A poignant, awkward moment is captured on film when he first meets his girlfriend after release, and can't quite pull off a hug and kiss with her. He later describes the moment as "sensory overload" after his months in confinement.

Richard struggles on a variety of levels. His childhood was chaotic, and he now struggles with anger issues. His entire social circle is gang members, but his parole terms forbid him to have any gang contacts whatsoever. He's a tattoo artist, and wants to do this for a living, but his customer base is gang members. He fathers a child shortly after his release, creating additional responsibilities for himself. He moves through a period of homelessness with his pregnant girlfriend, unable to keep steady employment. He's a walking contradiction, in that he is a gentle, doting boyfriend and father, but yet seems to be an explosion waiting to happen.

* Aaron is 39 years old, originally committed to San Quentin for conspiracy to commit robbery. At the beginning of the film, it's noted that he has already been released once, but has served 4 years on parole violation. As the film progresses, Aaron goes back for another violation, comes out again, and goes back for yet another violation. Each time he's released, Aaron returns to the tenderloin district of San Francisco. He knows this neighborhood invites problems for him, but it's his neighborhood. He's amiable, directionless, and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions. At the film's conclusion, Aaron himself notes that his original sentence was 12 months, but that he has now served a total of 8 years confinement because of parole violations.

This film is an excellent counterbalance to the typical broad brush strategies and solutions offered by policy makers to address offender recidivism. It is a stark reminder to us that each offender is unique, and so poses unique challenges for effective integration into the free community.

The corrections system and its representatives in this film are not impressive. There is a telling absence of meaningful personal connection with the offenders in the community, and the system seems to simply hover around the offenders as a threatening force, like an approaching thunder storm that merits attention for what it might do. If an indictment is made, it should not be of the parole agents in the film. Rather, it should be directed toward an overburdened, under resourced system that does not play a proactive role with these offenders.

This is not a film with a "happily ever after" ending. At the conclusion, these offenders prove typical of our national profile of offenders, in that two of the three have returned to prison. However, the viewer is left with the distinct awareness that this is certainly not the end of this story. These three individuals will go on living their complicated, chaotic lives. All that has happened here is that the camera has now been turned off, at least for the time being. It would be fascinating if Toshima were to revisit these three lives at some future time. The success of his initial undertaking certainly supports such an effort.