Film shows effects of mass incarceration
‘Time’ looks at both the imprisoned and families
Fox Rich recorded hundreds of hours of home videos while her husband, Rob Rich, was in prison, so he could see his children grow up. Fox didn’t know that the intimate footage would serve a greater purpose and bring awareness to the devastating effects of incarceration.
Director Garrett Bradley’s documentary “Time” (available in select theaters and streaming on Amazon Prime Video Oct. 16) highlights the lifelong effects that mass incarceration has on not only the imprisoned, but the families they leave behind.
Rob was sentenced to 60 years without parole in Louisiana State Penitentiary for a botched bank robbery – in which no one received medical attention, according to Louisiana’s Big Easy magazine – that he and Fox committed together in 1997. Fox served 31⁄
2 years for her role as the getaway driver.
But the phrase, “you do the crime, you do the time” isn’t all that simple. “Time” shows firsthand how people of color face sentencing disparities that are disproportionate to the offense.
“When you walk into the courtroom, the scales are already unbalanced when they see your skin complexion,” Fox tells USA TODAY. Black people, she continues, “are sentenced longer than their white counterparts and far more aggressively.”
According to the Sentencing Project, people of color “make up 37% of the U.S. population but 67% of the prison population.” The research and advocacy center notes that in general, “Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men.”
The documentary – which was listed as 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, as of Thursday – has taken on new meaning following the reemergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests over systemic racism and police brutality. Fox knows this battle all too well: She raised six Black sons while fighting for the release of her high school sweetheart.
“My story is the story of over 2 million people in the United States of America that are falling prey to the incarceration of poor people and people of color,” she says in the documentary.
In “Time,” Bradley seamlessly combines the intimate video diaries that Fox recorded over two decades with present-day footage, showcasing her ascension from a young mother to a resilient matriarch and full-fledged advocate.
Bradley, whose directorial work includes 2014’s “Below Dreams,” 2017’s documentary short film “Alone,” and 2018’s documentary short “The Earth Is Humming,” said her main goal was to show “how the (imbalanced) system was so unequivocally embedded in every part of the family’s life.”
“I was very much emotionally invested (in the story), but there was no sign of what the ending would be,” Bradley tells USA TODAY. “What I hope to illustrate is that one really doesn’t know where you stand in the grand scheme of things.” The justice system, she adds, “is a very vague, intentionally complicated bureaucratic process.”
Despite tirelessly fighting for her husband’s release and her family’s reunion, Fox doesn’t consider herself an activist.
“I see myself as an abolitionist,” she says in “Time.”
“Having served time in prison allowed me to see that prison didn’t just reflect what we read in the annals of history about slavery, but it was the same thing,” Fox says, referencing “inhumane” treatment. “Mass incarceration is slavery.”
Fox wasn’t the only one who evolved over the course of the documentary. The powerful juxtaposition of footage that showed the couple’s children going from kindergarten to graduate school highlights all the time Rob lost with his sons.
“My family has a very strong image but hiding behind that is a lot of hurt. A lot of pain,” says their eldest son Remington, who went on to graduate from Meharry Medical School of Medicine.
But their story is more than just one of pain. It’s a story of unconditional love, unwavering faith and resounding resilience as a family fights to be one again.
The documentary concludes with the Rich family being reunited in September 2018, after 21 years. Rob was granted clemency and released from prison wearing a “Never Give Up” T-shirt.
Upon his return, the Rich family held a ceremony to burn their cardboard cutout of Rob (a birthday gift their children got for Fox “to signify that he is in space with us,” she says).
“I said that once I went to prison, I would stand like a man,” Rob says at his welcome home celebration. “That I would speak truth to falsehoods, that I would finish strong and God knows that I would never give up, because y’all are worth fighting for.”
The couple’s fight for justice isn’t over. They created the the Participatory Defense Foundation to teach other inmates and families how to participate in their own defense and impact the outcome of cases.