Survivors Guide to Prison

A feature-length indictment of an American legal system in which justice comes a distant last behind the interests of politicians, prosecutors, private-prison operators and the big-name companies that profit from the forced labour of a million prisoners.

Matthew Cooke's assaultive documentary hammers away at injustices in U.S. justice system.

A valuable primer for those estimated 13 million Americans who are arrested every year.

Familiar but important points about our broken justice system, packaged for viewers who don't usually watch documentaries.

Cooke crams in so much persuasively appalling information ... that it's easy to forgive him for seemingly trying to push all viewers' proverbial buttons at once.

this new documentary promises to be a kind of self-help manual for the criminal classes, but in fact offers a synoptic analysis of everything that is malfunctioning in America's machinery of criminal justice

A film that, though it may be a bit too boisterous for its own good, is nonetheless one that everyone should see and talk about.

Survivors Guide to Prison is a very uncomfortable viewing experience. It will make you angry and shock you. But with this sort of subject matter, maybe that is the appropriate effect.

A sobering look at a life any of us, if enough things work against us, could find ourselves living, "Survivor's Guide to Prison" is a film that should not be missed.

Survivors Guide to Prison has changed the way I view the American justice system. There's not enough room in any review to account for all of it's essential information. It is a testament to how the 1% rule our world at the expense of everyone else.

As much an action plan for those outside prisons as it is a survival guide for those about to enter the darkness inside.

Somewhat star struck and glib, but always useful and sobering in its advice, chilling and damning in the broken system it portrays.