The Return

Winner of the Audience Award at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway's PBS-aired documentary follows several men who were released from prison in California after the 2012 Proposition 36 referendum resulted in major changes to the state's 1994 Three Strikes law. The famously controversial legislation doomed convicts to life sentences, even those incarcerated on relatively petty offenses. Among those profiled in The Return are Kenneth Anderson, who not only has an uneasy reunion with his family after more than 10 years behind bars, but also finds it difficult to gain employment; Kevin Bilal Chatman, who leaves prison for a halfway house but quickly loses his first post-prison job; Lester Wallace, a schizophrenic who was the first person to feel the brunt of the Three Strikes law; and a somewhat elusive figure known only as Shane, who finds a new life on a farm. Anderson receives the lion's share of the coverage here, and what is seen onscreen is disturbing and often harrowing, especially the less-than-celebratory attitude of Anderson's grown children over the release of their father. Offering a compelling study of the deleterious effects of a bad law, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)