Yahoo News Kim Kardashian West ‘Goes to War’ on Mass Incarceration in Documentary Trailer (Watch)
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Kim Kardashian West is going to war on mass incarceration.
Oxygen has released the trailer for her documentary “Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project,” which sees the media personality declare that “there is a mass incarceration problem in the United States.”
The two-hour documentary, premiering Sunday, April 5, captures Kardashian West as she explores the cases of Dawn Jackson, Alexis Martin, Momolu Stewart and David Sheppard, all of whom she and legal experts believe have been unfairly sentenced. To illuminate their stories, Kardashian West travels to the prisons where they’re being held, speaks to their families and friends, lobbies public officials, and consults with lawyers to try and facilitate their release.
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“I partnered with Oxygen to do the ‘Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project’ documentary because there are millions of people impacted by this broken justice system, and I wanted to put faces to these numbers and statistics,” said Kardashian West, who exec produces the doc as well as starring in it. “There are a lot of people who deserve a second chance, but many do not have the resources to make it happen. I want to help elevate these cases to a national level to effect change, and this documentary is an honest depiction of me learning about the system and helping bring tangible results to justice reform.”
Watch the trailer for the doc below:
Kardashian West was inspired to advocate for criminal justice reform and make the documentary when she heard the story of Alice Marie Johnson, a great-grandmother serving a life-plus-25-year sentence as a first-time nonviolent offender.
Her quest to release Johnson took her to the White House and a meeting with President Trump. She addressed the backlash she faced for the meeting during Variety and Rolling Stone‘s Criminal Justice Reform Summit in late 2018.
“I did consider the fact that I would get a lot of backlash if I went to the White House,” Kardashian West explained at the time. “For me, if it’s a life versus my reputation. People talk s— about me all day long, I didn’t really care. What more could they say about me, seriously? When I outweighed the options of bad stories about me that would probably last a week in this news cycle, versus saving someone’s life, that wasn’t an option. I will gladly go there and take the heat. Okay, if he’s gonna listen to me and he’s taking the meeting, maybe I can really get through to him and really explain to him. From meeting all of the people that I have met behind bars, I guarantee you, they don’t care who signs that clemency paper.”
The doc is produced by Kardashian West and Bunim Murray Productions, with Gil Goldschein, Julie Pizzi, Farnaz Farjam and Vince DiPersio all serving as executive producers.
“We’re excited about working with Kim Kardashian West to document her journey into prison reform advocacy and using her enormous platform to hold a megaphone to question the inequities surrounding prison sentencing,” said Rod Aissa, executive vice president of original programming and development for Oxygen Media and E! Production. “Her energy and influence have made an immediate impact that has stretched all the way to the White House. Her story is entirely unique, and this documentary is the kind of immersive, exclusive storytelling that our viewers have come to expect from Oxygen.”
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