''The House I Live In'', directed by
Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki (born October 5, 1969) is an American filmmaker and author. He is best known as a two-time winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, as well as multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards, for his films ''Why We Fight'', ''Reagan'', and '' Th ...
, is a 2012
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
about the
War on Drugs
The war on drugs is a Globalization, global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of prohibition of drugs, drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the Unite ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Participants
*
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander (born October 7, 1967) is an American writer and civil rights activist. She is best known for her 2010 book '' The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness''. Since 2018, she has been an opinion columnist ...
(civil rights litigator and the author of 2010's ''
The New Jim Crow
''The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness'' is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in ...
'')
*Shanequa Benitez (resident of Cromwell Towers housing project in
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as enu ...
)
*The Honorable
Mark W. Bennett (U.S. District Court Judge in
Sioux City, Iowa
Sioux City () is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 85,797 in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Iowa. The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County, ...
)
*
Charles Bowden
Charles Clyde Bowden (July 20, 1945 – August 30, 2014) was an American non-fiction author, journalist and essayist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Background
He attended the University of Arizona and then the University of Wisconsin, where h ...
(journalist covering drug war-caused violence on the
Mexico–U.S. border
The Mexico–United States border ( es, frontera Estados Unidos–México) is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traver ...
)
*Mike Carpenter (Chief of Security at Joseph Harp Correctional Center in
Lexington, Oklahoma
Lexington is a city in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, United States. The city population was 2,152 at the 2010 census.
Geography
Lexington is located in southern Cleveland County at . It is bordered on the west by the Canadian River, which forms the ...
)
*Marshal Larry Cearley (Police Officer in the village of
Magdalena, New Mexico
Magdalena is a village in Socorro County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 938 at the 2010 census.
"The Lady on the Mountain" is a rock formation on Magdalena Peak overlooking Magdalena. Spanish soldiers saw the profile of a woman on ...
)
*Eric Franklin (Warden of the Lexington Corrections Center in Lexington, Oklahoma)
*Maurice Haltiwanger (sentenced to 20 years for crack cocaine distribution)
*
Dr. Carl Hart (Professor of Clinical Neuroscience,
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
)
*Nannie Jeter (resident of
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
)
*Anthony Johnson (former small-time drug dealer in Yonkers, New York)
*Dr.
Gabor Maté
Gabor Maté (born January 6, 1944) is a Hungarian-Canadian physician and author. He has a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development, trauma and potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health includin ...
(Hungarian-born physician specializing in the treatment of addiction - has been working in
Vancouver, British Columbia
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, Canada for several decades)
*Mark Mauer (Director,
The Sentencing Project
The Sentencing Project is a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy center working for decarceration in the United States and seeking to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The organization produces nonpartisan report ...
)
*
Richard Lawrence Miller (American historian and expert on the history of U.S. drug laws)
*
Charles Ogletree
Charles James Ogletree Jr. (born December 31, 1952) is an American attorney, law professor and the Jesse Climenko Professor at Harvard Law School, the founder of the school's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He is also th ...
(Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a former academic advisor to Barack and Michelle Obama)
*Kevin Ott (formerly serving life without parole on drug charges, Lexington Correctional Center, Lexington, Oklahoma)
*Susan Randall (Private investigator in
Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...
- formerly a journalist/producer for National Public Radio, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Vermont Public Radio, and a researcher and associate producer for the A&E series Biography)
*
David Simon
David Judah Simon (born February 9, 1960) is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer best known for his work on ''The Wire'' (2002–08).
He worked for ''The Baltimore Sun'' City Desk for twelve years (1982–95), wrote '' Hom ...
(creator of ''
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American Crime film, crime drama Television show, television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The ...
'' on HBO)
*Julie Stewart (President and founder of
Families Against Mandatory Minimums
Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1991 to challenge mandatory sentencing laws and advocate for criminal justice reform. FAMM promotes sentencing policies that give judges the disc ...
aka FAMM)
*Dennis Whidbee (former drug dealer, and the father of Anthony Johnson)
*Officer Fabio Zuena (Police Officer in the city of
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
)
*
David Kennedy (Professor of Criminal Justice,
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice (John Jay) is a public college focused on criminal justice and located in New York City. It is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY). John Jay was founded as the only liberal arts c ...
in New York City)
Reception
The documentary has been well received. Among the
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
s,
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
gave it 94% based on 56 reviews and
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
gave it 77/100 based on 24 reviews.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
says ''The House I Live In'' "makes a shattering case against the War on Drugs."
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''.
Early life and education
Bradshaw was educated at Haberdashers ...
reviewed the film for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' and summed it up as an "angry and personal attack on America's war on drugs
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
contends it is a grotesquely wasteful public-works scheme".
Awards
* January 2012: Won the
Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
.
* April 2014: Won a
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
.
See also
*
List of American films of 2012
This is a list of American films released in 2012.
Box office
The highest-grossing American films released in 2012, by domestic box office gross revenue, are as follows:
January–March
April–June
July–September
October†...
*
Prison–industrial complex
The prison-industrial complex (PIC) is a term, coined after the " military-industrial complex" of the 1950s, used by scholars and activists to describe the relationship between a government and the various businesses that benefit from institutio ...
References
External links
*
*
National Public Radio Interview with Eugene Jarecki National Public Radio Article*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:House I Live In
2012 films
2012 documentary films
American documentary films
Sundance Film Festival award winners
History of drug control
Drug policy of the United States
Films directed by Eugene Jarecki
Criminal justice reform in the United States
2010s English-language films
2010s American films