You Gotta Be Crazy

This is the story about the pioneering program in the SF jail that has reduced violence among inmates. It also profiles a group of wacky individuals that started this revolutionary approach.

“No sane person wakes up in the morning and says, I want to work in a jail."

So says Sunny Schwartz, one of the most powerful voices in the restorative justice movement in America today.

And yet that’s exactly what she did, along with a like-minded “cadre of crazies”, including San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who decided to turn the standard model of incarceration on its head.

They put the most violent prisoners in the system together in an open dormitory. They started the first-ever charter high school inside a jail. Most radical of all, they resolved to make the most hardened criminals renounce violence.

Resolve to Stop the Violence Program (RSVP), the program they created, became the most successful restorative justice program in the country. Recidivism rates dropped by 80 %. The vast majority of graduates got out of jail, stayed out of jail, and most importantly, stopped hurting people.

You Gotta Be Crazy is their story.

Director: Randy Field

Producer/Editor: Michael Pickman-Thoon

Writer: Charlie Pearson

Learn more: www.yougottabecrazy.com

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