In conjunction with our summer exhibit, Finding Hope Within, HSM is pleased to present Beyond Bars: Reimagining Justice and Healing In Vermont, a film made about Vermonters, for Vermonters, and by a team of four Vermonters.

The film and discussion panel will be at the Marquis Theatre.

Beyond Bars hopes to bring Vermonters into conversation around how we are making sense of the very visible struggle on our streets and in our communities.  The filmmakers spent a year speaking with Vermonters on the frontlines of our human service, social safety net – both working in our non-profits and mutual aid organizations and also from folks with direct experience. Concurrently, they learned of the proposal to build a new women’s prison facility in Chittenden County, with a starting budget of $90,000,000.

This begged deeper questions for us, and hopefully for you: is building a new prison is the best investment we can make to help build safer, stronger and healthier communities? Does a new prison address the underlying issues that are causing crime and harm? How does our individual reaction to what we are seeing on our streets and in our communities feed into the types of policy responses we eventually legislate? 

Film is 75 minutes, with conversation afterwards.