A SHORT documentary about the power of restorative justice, The Quilters (Netflix, released on Friday) features the men of a maximum-security prison in Missouri who design and sew beautiful personalised quilts for foster children. The prisoners work from 7.30 a.m. until 3.30 p.m., five days a week, engaged in this meticulous and painstaking work, creating items of immense beauty. According to Jimmy, one of the prisoners, who is serving a life sentence, it is a way “to give something back”.
This all sounds very cuddly and quaint, until you remember that these men are imprisoned for the most violent and heinous crimes. In fairness, this reality isn’t denied by the prisoners, some of whom speak openly about their actions and their consequences, such as Ricky, a lifer who was first imprisoned at the age of 20 and is now 64: “I’m guilty for what I did. . . I messed up bad.” He has found purpose and a way to live with terrible remorse: known as the “sewing sensei”, he teaches the other men how to do the highly technical and intricate work of quilting.
This is therapeutic and calming for the men, allowing them a form of escapism, but also enabling them to use the same hands as carried out terrible violence for gentle and creative work, something that is a source of pride. It is a way for the prisoners, themselves lost and forgotten people, to tell damaged children: “We care about you, even when the world tells you that you’re no good.”
How do you recover the humanity of violent criminals, in an unforgiving and punitive world? Through purpose, through community, and through a creative process of redemption, whereby broken men learn to forgive themselves before seeking forgiveness from others. As Ricky says, “The people who can’t forgive themselves are the ones who can’t change.”
It is 40 years since the disaster that destroyed the main stand of the Valley Parade football stadium, in Bradford, taking the lives of 56 people and leaving many others with life-changing burns. In Unforgotten: The Bradford City fire (BBC2, 11 May), survivors, families, and first responders tell their story. The programme contains upsetting scenes of what can be described only as a towering inferno, a scene from hell, where even “the pitch was smoking.”
The fire, which broke out when Bradford City were playing Lincoln City, is thought to have been caused by a smouldering cigarette that ignited rubbish beneath the wooden stands. Despite making world headlines at the time, it is a disaster that is largely forgotten, other than by those who, like Hazel Greenwood, cannot ever forget. She lost her two young boys and her husband. “You don’t get over a trauma like that; you get used to it.”
This film is a fitting memorial for the deceased, and a touching homage to Bradford and its people.