Filmmakers and 4th Purpose Foundation hope that the showing of “Unguarded” at the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office Transitional Work Program in Louisiana will encourage others to show the film as well.
“We are so pleased to be working with Warden Jessica Davis of the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office,” said Dr. Kristi Anderson, Research and Program Officer at 4th Purpose Foundation. “She demonstrates her belief in the power of rehabilitation by working hard to provide transformational opportunities for those in her custody. We hope her example inspires others in the corrections field to consider similar programming.”
Beginning in 1972, APAC founder Dr. Mario Ottoboni volunteered in some of Brazil’s worst prisons. Seeing men and women frequently return to a life of crime once they left prison, Dr. Ottoboni decided to found his own restorative justice-based system. The results have been extraordinary: while the crime rate and recidivism rates have continued to increase in Brazil’s public prisons, within the APAC system they have steadily decreased.
Directed by Simonetta d’Italia-Wiener and produced by T.J Berden with the financial support from 4th Purpose Foundation, “Unguarded” explores the unique method behind APAC’s system. APAC is now present in twenty-three countries across four continents. Observing the daily lives of the “recuperandos” who live and work there, viewers will see firsthand why no one escapes from love. APAC’s restorative approach begins with the name it uses to refer to the people who live in prisons. Instead of calling the people inmates or prisoners, APAC calls them recuperandos because they are “people in the process of rehabilitation.”