Ten must-see criminal justice YouTube videos

by Matt Kelley

Published October 06, 2008 @ 12:40PM PST

You can use YouTube to see inside our courtrooms and our prisons. Here are a few short videos on prisons, crime and courts - and one rockin' Michael Jackson dance performance.

Incarcerex

"In clinical trials, Incarcerex has been shown effective at reducing election-related anxieties by making voters think you're doing something about the drug problem." This hilarious and effective animated short from the Drug Policy Alliance makes brutally clear the ulterior motives of the War on Drugs.

The Wrongfully Convicted

The Innocence Project works to free the innocent from American prisons with the help of DNA testing. In this moving video, 16 of the exonerated tear up their prisoner ID numbers onstage at an Innocence Project event. (Full disclosure, I'm the group's Online Communications Manager)

Sex in prison

T.J. Parsell, the author of "Fish: A Boy in a Man's Prison," talks about the sexual assaults he suffered as an inmate in Michigan state prison and the gender dynamics in prison. Today, he is a leading voice in the effort to eliminate prison rape around the world.

Have you ever had the cops in your face?

Watch the high-pressure interrogation of Chuck Erickson by Missouri police. Erickson's co-defendant, Ryan Ferguson, says police pressured Erickson to incriminate Ferguson in a murder in which neither man was involved, leading to the wrongful convictions of both men.

The War over the War on Drugs

Is the War on Drugs succeeding in reducing the supply and demand of illegal drugs in the U.S. while preventing violent crime? Or does it lock up millions of non-violent Americans, creating a cycle of poverty for their families and communities? Leaders from both sides of this argument make their arguments in this video from Foreign Policy Magazine. Featuring David Murray, chief scientist at the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Thriller

Hundreds of inmates in the Philippines perform a choreographed dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller. With 17 million views, this is one of YouTube's greatest hits of all time.  Is it prison arts programming or a human rights violation? You decide.

The Attica Rebellion

A six-minute documentary short about one of the most infamous prison uprisings in American history. In 1971, inmates controlled Attica prison in New York for four days, bringing national attention to the violence in prisons and the inhumane conditions in which inmates lived.

John Grisham with Charlie Rose

How does a wrongful conviction happen? How do prosecutors and judges ignore repeated appeals over a decade from two innocent inmates, presenting increasingly convincing evidence that they didn't commit the murder that sent them to prison? John Grisham explored every detail of the wrongful convictions - and eventual exonerations - of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz in his excellent 2006 book "The Innocent Man." Here he discusses these cases and the broader causes of wrongful convictions with Charlie Rose on PBS.

In Prison My Whole Life

Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested in Philadelphia for a murder he says he didn't commit on the night documentarian William Francone was born. This trailer for a new documentary by Francone explores Mumia's case and injustice in America through the lens of his 25 years on Earth.

Paradise Lost

The first section of an intriguing documentary on the case of the West Memphis Three - three men who say they were wrongfully convicted of killing three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas in 1994. This case has become a cause célèbre and continues to spark activism and headlines. The full documentary is available on YouTube in more than 30 sections