San Antonio College Library

Depicts a harrowing journey through a near-future world of decaying cities, murderous adolescents and nightmarish technologies of punishment and crime.

The Interrupters follows three individuals who with bravado, humility, and even humor, work to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this is an intimate journey into the stubborn persistence of violence in our cities.

Joshua Cordell, a seemingly soft-spoken and mild-mannered 13-year-old, finds himself in juvenile court on charges that he battered his own mother. This character profile illuminates how juvenile crime is not only a social issue but, all too often, a family one as well.

Brian is desperate to fit into society, but left to himself, he has to adapt to a world that looks very different from 24 years ago. He tries to tackle the internet, get a driver's license and find his first love. Brian's story is interwoven with Juan and Gianni's. Juan is a teenager on parole, and we are placed inside his claustrophobic life, allowing us to understand his decision to abandon his baby girl for a gang lifestyle, and his eventual regret...

When 15-year old Melissa Evans gives birth to a baby girl with cerebral palsy, she has nowhere to turn for help. After leaving the hospital without her newborn, Raven, the baby becomes a ward of the state. Due to her medical condition, Raven is placed in the home of a special-needs foster parent. This program follows a home visit by Melissa's social worker, allowing us to see how she handles both cases, that of Melissa and of her baby.

What's it like to spend time in one of America's largest maximum-security juvenile prisons? Follow the lives of teenage inmates who must progress through the rigorous release program of Indiana's Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in order to gain their freedom. Footage includes offenders completing Pendleton's gang education program and inmates struggling through drug and alcohol addiction.

Get a cop out here, I'm hurt," pleads an elderly voice to the 911 dispatcher. "There's a maniac in the house." Although the distress call is muffled and chaotic, the facts of the case soon become horrifically clear: 96-year-old Miss Mary has suffered a brutal sexual assault at the hands of her grandson, Billy. As Mary later shares on camera and in the presence of victim advocates, Billy's attack was the culmination of years of systematic abuse, including...

Filmed inside Indiana's Lake County Juvenile Justice Complex, this documentary is one in a series of programs exploring where juvenile crime begins, how it evolves, and what's at stake for kids, families, and professionals in the system. Featured in this episode (the second of two parts) are the stories of Kenneth Gant and his brother, Kentrell - two brothers from Gary, Indiana; and Devon, a young man on the verge of aging out of the juvenile system....