Six Documentary Films Debaters Should Watch For The Criminal Justice Reform Topic

Bill Batterman shares six documentary films he recommends that debaters watch for the 2020-2021 criminal justice reform topic.

This video begins by explaining why documentaries can be a powerful part of your debate research. It then provides a list of six documentaries that will help students better understand and debate the criminal justice reform topic. Finally, it offers some brief advice for how to study these films.

The films included in this video are:

1. The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris (1988)
2. The Central Park Five by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon (2012)
3. 13th by Ava DuVernay (2016)
4. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes by Brett Story (2016)
5. The Blood Is at the Doorstep by Erik Ljung (2017)
6. The Force by Peter Nicks (2017)

Future videos may offer additional recommendations.

Note: The quotes from Diana Hess are from her 2007 article “From Banished to Brother Outsider, Miss Navajo to An Inconvenient Truth: Documentary Films as Perspective-Laden Narratives” (Social Education, Volume 71, Issue 4, pp. 194-199).

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