In the tough-on-crime 1990s, harsh laws eliminated college programs in American prisons. Refusing to accept this injustice, women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility determined to bring higher education back inside the prison walls. Their achievement became a widely emulated model, leading to thousands of incarcerated people earning diplomas. In Degrees of Freedom, the women narrate their powerful journey of organizing behind and through the bars of New York’s only maximum-security prison for women to create a transformative community of care —reclaiming their futures and challenging the narrative of who they are and what they can achieve.

DOCUMENTING THE HISTORY OF THE BEDFORD HILLS PRISON COLLEGE PROGRAM

Degrees of Freedom made its WORLD PREMIERE at the Dances With Films Festival in NYC on December 5, 2024 and won the Audience Award for Documentary Shorts

MEET THE CAST & CREW

Formerly incarcerated women telling our own stories

“A woman shouldn’t have to go to prison to be educated, to be supported.”

–Aisha Elliott