Everyday Injustice Podcast Episode 338: Formerly Incarcerated Filmmakers Explore Healing Beyond Punishment

On Episode 338 of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with filmmakers Julius Irving and Leigh Scott as part of the Represent Justice series “Pathways Beyond Criminalized Crises,” a collection of films created by formerly incarcerated people that examines what can happen when healing, care and restoration replace punishment. Irving directed “The Silent (R)evolution: Freedom From the Inside Out,” while Scott directed “Uncarcerated,” with both filmmakers drawing on their own experiences with incarceration and community advocacy. Scott describes how a mental health crisis following the deaths of his wife and daughter ultimately brought him into the criminal legal system. After his release from prison in 2015, he began working in homeless services and justice-related spaces, where he saw connections between incarceration, poverty, mental health, substance use and the lack of adequate community support. His film examines those connections while exploring alternative first-responder programs and ways communities can respond to crises without relying primarily on police and incarceration. Irving recounts his own experience returning to jail after being stopped while driving to work and discovering his license had been suspended, resulting in a probation violation. Despite community members, employers and a county commissioner advocating on his behalf, Irving was sentenced to 90 days in county jail — a period he argues can be enough for someone living near the poverty line to lose a job, vehicle, housing and financial stability. Rather than focus his film exclusively on the harms of incarceration, Irving said he wanted to examine the power of community and demonstrate how people can provide one another with forms of healing and restorative justice that punitive institutions often fail to provide. The conversation also explores how filmmaking gave Irving and Scott a platform to transform lived experience into advocacy. Irving describes filmmaking as an opportunity to communicate his story to a larger audience, while Scott calls the project a “full circle moment” that allowed him to combine a lifelong interest in filmmaking with his work in homelessness and criminal justice reform. Both discuss the support they received through Represent Justice and the importance of giving formerly incarcerated people the resources and opportunity to tell their own stories rather than having those experiences interpreted exclusively by outsiders.