Road to Return

Overcrowded, often brutal, and--considering that 75% of inmates return within five years--rather poor at rehabilitating our nation's criminals, prisons are becoming big business, with new facilities opening at an unprecedented rate. In New Orleans, however, an odd couple comprised of Nelson Marks, a black bank robber who served 12 years, and Bob Roberts, a white college professor, have created a program aimed at helping ex-cons return to society as productive citizens. The transitional support program, dubbed Project Return, boasts a phenomenal recidivism rate below 6%. Narrated by Tim Robbins (who, ironically, played a different sort of character named Bob Roberts in his film of the same name), filmmaker Leslie Neale and her husband John Densmore's (of The Doors) Road to Return is a moving--and vigorously questioning--examination of the failure of the prison system, in general, and the success of Project Return, in particular. Marks and Roberts do not see the world through liberal-colored glasses; they readily admit many hardcore criminals will not benefit from the program, which includes group drumming (sounds weird, but some of the most powerful and undeniably straight-from-the-heart segments in the film occur during drumming and personal story sharing), counseling, learning office skills, and providing help with job placement. With 65% of the prison population incarcerated for non-violent crimes, programs such as Project Return make eminent sense: we can't reasonably expect a 20-year-old kid, who spends 10 years behind bars for dealing drugs in the 'hood to emerge as a well-adjusted 30-year-old man with a tender butt and a chipper attitude, without some kind of serious transition work. Unfortunately, due to inadequate funding, Project Return is presently only able to take 50 of the 350 applicants who seek help each quarter. Road to Return is a compelling, timely, often heart-rending look at one effective, relatively inexpensive, and humane approach to slowing one of America's fastest growing industries: prisons. Sure to provoke discussion, this is one of those films that can also change the way people think. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)