When They See Us is a powerful Netflix show by Ava Duvernay about the Central Park Five, the boys who were wrongfully imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit. It is now the most-watched/daily Netflix show in the USA, and has created some real world fallout: the prosecutors have had to resign from their current positions. Via the Atlantic:
Thirty years ago, five New York City teenagers were arrested for—and later falsely convicted of—the rape and attempted murder of a 28-year-old woman named Trisha Meili, who became known as the Central Park Jogger. That landmark case is examined anew in the Ava DuVernay miniseries When They See Us.
The project spends much of its run time explicating the racist logic and manipulative tactics by which New York City law enforcement, aided by uncritical media coverage, criminalized the five black and Latino boys, whose case-defining confessions were coerced and whose guilt was presumed before they entered any courtroom. But crucially, When They See Us also introduces viewers to—and thereby emphasizes the innocence of—Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, Kevin Richard, and Antron McCray as it indicts the systems that led to their incarceration.