For director Roger Ross Williams, prison was not a distant possibility when he was growing up. “As a young Black man, I always felt there was a chance that, whether or not I committed a crime, I could end up behind bars.” Determined to avoid this fate, Roger escaped his hometown of Easton as a teenager to pursue his dreams of becoming a successful filmmaker and, in 2009, became the first Black director to win an Academy Award.Meanwhile, Roger watched as many of his friends and family became lost inside America's prison system, that counts over 2.3 million inmates. "I don't know why, or where, or how. Something always went wrong," says Troy Alvin, one of Roger's oldest friends. "I got locked up when I was young, and couldn't catch up after that." As Roger returns to Easton to explore the web of forces that have consumed so many people from his past, two central questions emerge: Why are so many Black men in jail? And who is benefitting? In a search for answers, Roger sets out on a mission to investigate America's $80 billion dollar a year prison industrial complex. As he explores the network of companies who have inserted themselves into the prison economy, he uncovers a disturbing pattern of greed and corruption, as well as enormous financial incentives to keep inmate populations high, and sentences long. Hoping to gain perspective on the broader failure of America's prison system, Roger turns his attention to his second home - Europe. He visits the Dutch "luxury prison", to compare the differences between the US and the Netherlands. Throughout the film, Roger interweaves his exploration of the larger forces in America driving the explosive growth of the prison system, with the personal struggles of Troy and others from Easton who are caught within this web of correctional control. Through this balance of micro and macro perspectives, Roger illuminates the disastrous human consequences of corporate influence on public policy, and the urgent need for change.