“As the so-called “war on drugs” enters its fifth decade, we need to ask whether it, and the approaches that comprise it, have been truly effective...Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities.”
Attorney General Eric Holder, 2013
THE WAR ON DRUGS
In 2014, President Obama announced the Clemency Initiative, recognizing the Federal Government’s decades-long record of racial sentencing disparities especially for non-violent drug offenders. 16,776 imprisoned people applied and only 1,697 were approved and granted clemency. Danielle’s 1993 case was the first federal conspiracy trial, conviction, and life sentence for drugs in Louisiana, but hefty sentences were becoming the norm across the country. They were part of the Federal War on Drugs policy that had its roots in the Nixon administration, and was an intentional policy of policing and incarcerating poor black communities.
THE PROMISE OF CLEMENCY
When President Obama exited the White House, the Clemency Initiative left with him. Today, clemency is only attended to when a celebrity takes up the cause, and thousands of non-violent offenders caught in this net languish in prison. COMMUTED will help continue the clemency conversation as Danielle finds her place and voice in the push for more commutations and highlights the movement towards restorative justice. The film will be relevant years beyond its release as Americans spend future decades unraveling the generational impacts of racial disparities in over-sentencing and incarceration; Danielle’s story can re-engage citizen viewers towards real reform of our broken system.
INCARCERATED WOMEN AND BOYFRIEND CRIMES
Currently, women are the fastest growing segment of our prison population, but they are often overlooked in conversations and documentaries about criminal justice. Through Danielle’s story, this film will expand the conversation to include the voice of women who were incarcerated, and the impacts of such incarceration on their families and communities. Danielle spent nearly half of her life locked away and like many of those imprisoned with her, she was convicted of a “boyfriend crime,” a term for crimes associated with husbands or boyfriends, and a strategy often used by prosecutions to leverage guilty pleas from male defendants. COMMUTED will give audiences an understanding of the total human cost of handing down lengthy sentences to mothers with young children as the country seeks alternative disciplinary and penal options.
