Sherriff Eric Higgins' proposal seemed almost too radical to believe.
Allow 46 incarcerated men, many of whom were serving time for capital charges, to roam free in their unit with open cell doors for weeks at a time with minimal supervision from deputies. And yet, the sheriff, who helmed the social experiment turned unscripted Netflix series conducted at Pulaski County Regional Detention Facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, felt it could be exactly what detainees needed.
"We thought, ‘What can we do to create some ownership for those detainees in that unit?’” Higgins told Netflix’s Tudum of the eight-part docuseries, "Unlocked: A Jail Experiment," which premiered on April 10.
“How do we make the facility safer, and what can we do to still hold them accountable but empower them at the same time?”
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In endeavoring to create an environment with less direct supervision, Higgins wanted to both humanize incarcerated people and give the men in the facility's H-unit the autonomy to foster an environment grounded in community. Doing so, he hoped, would not only spur accountability and a sense of collectiveness but also lower the detention center's recidivism rates — the tendency of an incarcerated person to re-offend, often after being released — and discourage detainees from committing future crimes.
“In this country, we have a certain perception of someone who goes to jail — the assumption being that they’re guilty,” Higgins told the outlet. “But they deserve dignity. These individuals, they’re fathers, they’re uncles, they’re sons. People care about them . . . they’re not just a number. I believe that if you treat people right, and you hold them accountable . . . I think they take that with them when they walk out of this facility. I think we have proven that people will rise to the expectation.”
Here are key moments from the experiment:
"Unlocked" is streaming on Netflix.
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"Unlocked: A Jail Experiment": 7 things we learned from Netflix's free-roaming detainees experiment
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23.04.2024
Sherriff Eric Higgins' proposal seemed almost too radical to believe.
Allow 46 incarcerated men, many of whom were serving time for capital charges, to roam free in their unit with open cell doors for weeks at a time with minimal supervision from deputies. And yet, the sheriff, who helmed the social experiment turned unscripted Netflix series conducted at Pulaski County Regional Detention Facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, felt it could be exactly what detainees needed.
"We thought, ‘What can we........
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