Clear: A Re-Entry Story

Background and Purpose

Exonerees—individuals who were convicted of and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, and eventually exonerated—face social, psychological, health, and practical problems after their release. Being innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted does not ameliorate their re-entry challenges, and in many cases, it exacerbates psychological and social challenges, which affects exonerees’ relationships with others. Despite their re-entry challenges and innocence, exonerees receive few to no services upon release, even less than that offered to parolees.

This poster will introduce a reality-based fictional short film, Clear, as a means of both introducing arts-based research and demonstrating alternative forms of dissemination. The purpose of this film, in line with the methods of arts-based research, is to generate “empathic participation” (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p.3) into the lives of exonerees by illuminating the experiences of a woman exoneree on the day of her release from prison after being wrongfully incarcerated for 16 years. The focus of the film is on relational aspects between the exoneree and her family.

Methods

The film was created based on eight months of research into publicly available texts and artifacts. These texts and artifacts included a comprehensive review of the research literature, as well as the “grey literature,” such as newspaper articles, documentaries, investigative journalism television programs, podcasts, and exoneree biographies on the Innocence Project and National Registry of Exonerees websites. The film was also based on preliminary research from a study examining exonerees’ experiences. As a form of arts-based research, findings were distilled into a single composite story of a female character who is exonerated and released from prison.

Results

In arts-based research, the “results” of a project are in the form of art, in this case a 10-minute fictional short film about a woman exoneree that presents the relational challenges that were identified in the data. This film highlights the relationships between the main character and her family on the day of her release from prison, demonstrating the key findings about relationship challenges upon exoneration, including an acute awareness of having missed out on significant and day-to-day life experiences of loved ones, ambivalent feelings toward loved ones, and uncertainty about intimacy. The film is a representation of an exoneree’s experience that is evocative and relays the findings from research in ways that are not be possible through discourse alone. 

Conclusions and Implications

Clear, which will be embedded in the poster, is an example of how research findings can be disseminated through film, and the utility of arts-based research, which is an approach far out of the traditional range of social work research methodology, in promoting social justice. In this case, the film presents research knowledge of a serious social justice issue surrounding mass incarceration in a compelling way, which in turn can compel practitioners, activists, policymakers, and others to consider the harm that wrongful conviction has on exonerees and their family members. 

References

Barone, T. & Eisner, E. (2012). Arts based research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.