Alexandria, VA, November 25, 2014 – Edgar Barens, visiting media specialist in the Jane Addams College of Social Work’s Addams Center for Social Policy and Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the recipient of the CSWE 2014 Audience Choice Award for his film Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall. The film, an Oscar nominee, portrays the care by fellow prisoners for World War II veteran Jack Hall, a terminally ill prisoner in the Iowa State Penitentiary. The trailer for Prison Terminal may be viewed here.
Prison Terminal was one of 12 films selected for the film festival at the 60th Annual Program Meeting as part of CSWE’s continuing efforts to showcase classroom resources for social work educators. Audience members rate the films in the festival. One respondent stated that Prison Terminal was a “beautiful portrayal of compassion and dignity in an unlikely space.”
Said Barens, ”I am very honored to receive the CSWE 2014 Audience Choice Award. I think it is a testament to the compassion, rehabilitation, and redemption a prison-based, prisoner-run hospice can bring to society's darkest corners—a maximum security prison—and to the amazing power true love and caring can bring to the forsaken lives of the incarcerated."
“We’re pleased to present this award to Mr. Barens,” said Darla Spence Coffey, CSWE president and chief executive officer. “We hope this recognition will highlight the need for services to prisoners and their families that respect the dignity of the individual.”
CSWE is a nonprofit national association representing more than 2,500 individual members as well as graduate and undergraduate programs of professional social work education. Founded in 1952, this partnership of educational and professional institutions, social welfare agencies, and private citizens is recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation as the sole accrediting agency for social work education in the United States.