Karen James interviews students about a Lewis & Clark College course taught by Dr. Reiko Hillyer. “CLASSROOM 4”, an award-winning documentary film about the course will air on PBS's POV on November 25th. The 28-minute film follows a semester-long Inside Out college class at Columbia River Correctional Institution, in which incarcerated students and undergraduates from Lewis & Clark learn together as peers. As the group meets each week to study the history of crime and punishment in the US, they explore concepts such as mercy, justice, the evolution of the carceral state, and prison abolition. At the film’s Portland premier on November 9th at the Clinton Street Theatre, the students, who included formerly incarcerated students from the class, spoke about their experiences taking the course and about the film which was followed by a Q&A with Professor Reiko Hillyer. The class is part of a network called The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
Interviewed are Maddie Selby, Sophie Relman, Nick Fiveoaks, Joshua Wright, Gabe Messer, Leo Crespo-Cervantes, Rami Jaggers.
CLASSROOM 4 https://www.classroom4film.com/
PBS POV https://www.pbs.org/pov/filmslist/pov-shorts-season-8/
Professor of History and Department Chair
Lewis & Clark College