Excerpt 1'40"
PRISONERS OF KATRINA
2006
Producer/ director/ DoP for BBC News & Current Affairs
Executive producer: Karen O'Connor
BBC2
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while thousands fled New Orleans, the city’s prisoners were trapped.
Fresh eye-witness accounts reveal to reporter Olenka Frankel what really happened to those left behind,
and how crucial forensic evidence was simply washed away.
Long after most people had fled a devastated city, inmates of Orleans Parish Prison – many of them shackled –
were still waiting to be rescued from the blazing heat and the stinking floods.
The documentary Prisoners of Katrina did not resolve the question of whether prisoners lost their lives in the aftermath of the storm. But when I saw the remains of that evidence room, one thing became clear: Katrina means scores of innocent prisoners will lose their lives to the Louisiana state penitentiary. Clive Stafford-Smith
Watch the whole film here