VICE (2013) s05e12 Episode Script

Women Behind Bars & The Business of Making Art

1 (theme music playing) Shane Smith: This week on "Vice," the staggering surge of incarcerated women in America.
The overwhelming majority of women are there for non-violent crimes.
Your legs are shackled to the bed.
Yeung: Whilst the C-section's happening? Like that's the point when you're gonna run away.
I know, right! Smith: And then, how the threat of forgeries is causing turmoil in the art world.
Rainer Crone: Fantastic.
Ben Anderson: Same paint.
Same acetate, same everything.
This is probably in excess of 200 or $300 million dollars worth of paintings that you could make with these.
(theme music playing) Isobel Yeung: Go, go, go! Refugee: We are not animals! Last year, we followed President Obama as he made history becoming the first sitting US President to actually enter a federal prison.
Obama: How y'all doing? - Alright.
- How you doing, sir? - Alright.
Smith: Now, our special report focused on men caught up in the system's harsh treatment of non-violent drug offenders, but lost in the debate is the fact that women are actually the fastest-growing population of inmates in America.
Jennifer Goodwin: Face the wall, please.
Face the wall.
Hands on the wall.
You need to be leaning into the wall! If you're not leaning, you and me have a problem.
(speaking English) (Roxanne, Ybarra speaking English) (Roxanne speaking) (Ybarra speaking) (speaks) (Ybarra speaking) (speaks) (Ybarra speaking) (Goodwin speaking) (speaks) Yeung: The Bexar County Jail houses around 600 women at any given time.
They gave us access to their intake process as a group of women were being booked in.
(speaks) (speaks) (Yeung speaking) (speaks) (Yeung speaking) Yeung: Since 1980, the number of women incarcerated in America has increased by more than 700%.
Congresswoman Karen Bass has watched as the population of American women behind bars has grown to be the largest in the world.
Do you think that there's enough momentum behind criminal justice reform for incarcerated women? I do not believe there's enough momentum right now.
What I have found is my-- my colleagues were very enthusiastic around criminal justice reform, and as they moved forward, did not recognize that they were not including women.
It was an oversight due to lack of understanding.
Women go to prison for very different reasons than men.
The overwhelming majority of women are there for non-violent crimes.
The average woman that winds up incarcerated, her pathway to incarceration is a long line of abuse that is never dealt with, and then she winds up getting trapped in the criminal justice system.
Yeung: We wanted to know what it was like for the unprecedented number of women now trapped inside, and to see how the system itself was coping.
Do not remove your hands.
Do you understand me? - Yep.
Yes, ma'am.
Yeung: How do you normally treat the intakes? The people coming in? Well, with the intakes, I'm a lot more stern with the intakes.
Cause I need to set an attitude.
If you come in, and I'm all smiley, you're gonna be glad to be here.
I don't want you to be glad to be here.
Get back out of the doorway! There's a whole cell back there.
Use it! Yeung: Male offenders are processed in the same facility as women.
Both populations have increased so dramatically, that Bexar County has opened multiple new housing units.
John Lauer: I've seen some people get hurt in this place.
Officers and inmates.
Women are just as bad as the men.
Yeah? I've been-- I've been attacked by women more than once.
Which is kind of scary.
Yeung: And it's your jail policy for everyone to be wearing a-a uniform? (speaking) We are about to spend the night in the jail.
Nothing's allowed in.
All jewelery off, hair bands, everything that could potentially be used as a weapon.
(pounding) Hi, ladies.
(inmates greeting) Yeung: Hey.
So, this is it, I guess.
Uh I've got a blanket inside, although it's pretty hot in here.
Pretty gross-looking sheet, which I think is the bed sheet, and this, which is toiletries.
Yeung: Is this all the toiletries you guys get? (speaks) (Josie speaking) Is it tough, you know, like peeing and going to the toilet in front of everyone? No.
(speaking) Yeung: Yeah, you're just here! You've got a perfect viewing platform.
Are some of you guys in here for the same reason? What kind of reasons? (speaking) Yeung: What are you in here for? (Tammy speaks) How long were you using for? - Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
Is this your first time in here? (woman speaking) Someone needs the toilet? Alright, we'll move out.
(Tammy chuckles) (speaking) This is lights out? It's super bright in here.
It's gonna be really frigging hard to sleep.
Yeung: After barely three hours, the lights were on again.
(Deputy Elizabeth Valdez speaking) Yeung: It's 3:30 in the morning.
Officers have just woken everyone up to serve breakfast.
I think so that they can stagger it throughout the jail.
Yeung: Meals are served in shifts in an attempt to deal with the sheer number of non-violent offenders now crowding the cells.
My charge is felony possession of a controlled substance under a gram.
It was tampering with government records, and I had a fake ID.
Making checks, writing checks.
ID stuff.
Stormy: Prostitution.
- Amanda: It's all money.
- Mmm.
And then money leading to drugs.
Yeung: How many addicts are there in here? Most are.
- I think everybody's an addict in some way.
Yeung: Since many laws require mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, judges like Nancy Gertner find they fail to take into account the specific circumstances of women.
The factors in the system distorted the sentencing.
It's not just that women got higher sentences than they should have.
It is that sometimes they got higher sentences than men.
You rarely found women at the top of a drug conspiracy.
They were more often at the very, very bottom, because they were being abused by the head honcho.
So, a woman gets a very large sentence, because she's associated with the drugs in some way.
She could not cooperate against the man on the rung above her.
It-- it-- (scoffs) It is-- It's a criminal justice policy that was, sort of, profoundly, profoundly irrational, and it was very difficult to be a judge meting out these sentences when you wanted to say something different.
Yeung: Because of these pervasive mandatory minimum guidelines, one of which was reinstated in Indiana in 2016 by then-governor Mike Pence, non-violent offenders end up serving lengthy sentences in federal or state prisons.
We're here in Indianapolis at the Indiana Women's Prison, which is actually the oldest women's facility in the country.
It's currently running at pretty much full capacity, so we're gonna head in and meet some of the offenders.
(Yeung speaking) All right.
(both Yeung, Chasity speaking English) (inmate speaking) (laughs) (Yeung speaking) (Chasity speaking) Yeung: With so many crimes revolving around drugs, the effects of mandatory minimums are felt throughout the facility.
Do you mind me asking what your sentence is for? Uh, manufacturing meth, dealing meth, and I get a total of 58 years.
- 58 years? - Yeah.
That's what your original sentence was for or? - Yeah.
I have more time than some people here for murder.
I have more years than they do in-- in total amount.
Yeung: Resigned to long periods of time behind bars, women make do with what they can.
Yeung: So these are cards that people have sent you? Charissa: These are cards, yeah.
(Yeung speaking) (Angela speaking) It's girly! Yeung: What other kind of stuff do you get? Well, we make hairspray with Jolly Ranchers.
(speaking) I just-- Yeah.
You made it yourself? Yeung: Is it easy to get hold of tampons and stuff? (Alicia speaking) That works? (speaking) Alright, ladies, this is a stand-up or sit-down count! Yeung: But feminine hygiene barely scratches the surface of the inmates' concerns.
(Angela speaking) (Yeung speaking) Yeung: Over 70% of incarcerated women suffer from mental illness, and with inadequate mental health resources inside prisons, the solitary confinement unit is becoming a De facto mental hospital.
(inmate screaming) (inmate 2 speaking) (inmate 3 speaking) (inmate 4 laughing maniacally) So, we're just walking along the restrictive housing unit, which houses about 25 women here.
You can see two women out here are on suicide watch.
These women are on four-hour shift rotations, and they're checking in every few minutes to check that no one has killed themselves.
Yeung: For officers like Lieutenant Spells, guarding mentally ill women has become a major part of their responsibilities.
How many of the women here are suffering from mental health problems? (chuckles derisively) Pretty much gonna be all of them.
This unit holds 25.
I've been here for a while, 18 years.
At one time, we used to have just, maybe, like a couple of 'em.
But the ones that's coming in here, you know, throughout the years, - is more mental issues.
- Mm-hmm.
Yeung: What's the hardest part about your job? A lot of times they have kids.
Then, you know, when they come in to visit, the kids are crying, and I just really feel sorry for the kids.
Yeung: Around 60% of women in state prisons are mothers.
Some of whom enter the system while pregnant.
Charissa didn't know she was pregnant when, she says, she violated her parole by smoking marijuana.
Now, she's facing the sobering reality of giving birth behind bars.
Can you talk me through the process of what happens when you go to give birth? I know that I can only stay 24 hours with my baby.
Once you're there for 24 hours, the family-- or whoever you have, the caregiver-- - will pick up the baby.
- Mm-hmm.
What do you think that's gonna be like coming back here to the prison after 24 hours, after given birth? It's gonna be-- I'm gonna be a mess.
Not being able to have that bond with my kid, and having somebody else take care of my baby.
Yeung: Though Charissa didn't qualify, Indiana does run one of a few programs in the country that allows select non-violent offenders to keep their newborns in prison with them for a period of up to 18 months.
How old is she? She is nine months.
Yeung: You were in here when you gave birth? Yes, I went to the hospital, and I had to have a emergency C-section with her, because I went early with her, so, she's my little early-comer.
Yeung: And how was that, giving birth there? We was handcuffed to the bed by just one arm when the C-section was happening, and your legs are shackled to the bed.
Whilst the C-section's happening? That's-- Yeah.
- Like that's the point when you're gonna run away.
I know, right! (shrieks) Yeah! It's tough.
It's tough but it's worth it.
Stephanie: I can't imagine having my baby, and then the next day, giving her up.
Some people don't have families, so they have to give it to foster care.
You know, you don't know them people.
You don't know who's taking care of your child.
Yeung: In fact, incarcerated mothers with children in foster care risk losing them permanently, because of a law called the Adoption and Safe Families Act.
It stipulates that any parent with a child in foster care for 15 out of 22 months loses permanent custody.
But the vast majority of primary caregivers are mothers.
This leaves women, like Nakita, in a race against time to retain their parental rights.
Oh, he's so handsome! That's him when he was younger.
This is all him up here? Yeah, yeah.
Uh-huh.
You must be happy.
Yeung: Nakita is serving the remainder of her sentence in a halfway house, where she's allowed to leave to go to and from work, but has limited access to her son, Antonio.
Where's your son now? He's been in foster care since I turned myself in in February.
How's that been? Oh! Hmm.
Me and my son ain't never been separated from each other, so this is our first time.
He don't understand it.
All he know is mommy's not there, and we done had an episode with my son trying to kill hisself, because he felt like I left him, and didn't nobody want him, so He was in a mental hospital for about three weeks.
And how old is he? He'll be nine in October.
If I don't get a early release, I will be here until August 2017.
So, whether or not you get your son back depends on whether or not you get an early release from here.
Yeah.
Yeung: Like Nakita, most incarcerated women are mothers, which leaves hundreds of thousands of children without their primary caregivers and vulnerable to the cycle itself.
(Coral speaking) Yeung: What are the legislations that you think need to be passed on a national level to address women who are entering the justice system? Well, I think we need to get rid of mandatory minimums.
I think we need to, um increase resources in prisons.
I also think, because of all of these years of mass incarceration, now our society needs to build an entire layer of support services for people when they come out, so that they don't re-offend.
We are ones to clamor about human rights in other countries, and I think we need to examine the human rights issue right here in the United States, and I think we should start with our prison system.
Art has become one of the hottest commodities on the planet.
International art sales topped $45 billion last year alone.
and high-end works consistently have seen better long-term results than investments like gold or silver.
Reporter: Picasso's "Le Reve" sold for $155 million.
Up over 200%.
Smith: But all of that value, depends on whether the work itself can be verified as genuine, and in the case of prolific artists like Andy Warhol, determining which pieces are real and which are fake, is a controversial decision that could be worth millions.
Anderson: In the 1960s, Andy Warhol changed the very definition of art and what it means to be an artist.
Reporter: Andy, a Canadian government spokesman said, that your art could not be described as original sculpture.
- Would you agree with that? - Uh, yes.
Reporter: Why not create something new? Uh, because it's easier to do.
Anderson: Warhol's methods-- removing the artist's hand and industrializing the creative process -- was revolutionary.
I spoke to Warhol's close friend, Joe Simon-Whelan, about Andy's world.
By the time I met him, everything was moving so fast for him.
I mean, he was turning out a film a week.
He was managing Velvet Underground.
He wasn't so much into painting.
The concept of the-- of the piece, he liked, but the actual making of it, he didn't like, and, um, he was very open to having others make the work.
He used to call it "art by telephone.
" He would call his off-site ventures, and say, "Okay, I need, you know, ten of these.
" They would make ten, give 'em to Andy, then he would roll 'em out for the client, and say, "Whoo! Voila, they're all made.
" Meanwhile, downtown they're just, you know, just drinking whiskey, doing whatever they're doing.
Making extra prints.
Don't you think he would have liked the idea that there could have been thousands of these prints made, and maybe even prints made, you know, after his death.
Actually, he-- he would have liked it, but his-- certainly his dealers and his salespeople didn't.
Anderson: When Joe got the chance to buy his own Warhol, he was positive it was real.
Simon-Whelan: The reason I bought my painting after Andy died is cause I thought it was authenticated by the executor of his estate.
It's on the cover of the catalogue raisonné of 1970, which pretty much covered all of Warhol's work, so I thought, "Great, providence, wonderful work.
" Anderson: Joe's friend and art dealer, Michael Hue-Williams, arranged the sale.
In the case of the "Red Self Portraits," I sold that painting to Joe Simon.
It had a hand-written authentification on it by Fred Hughes.
Written at a time when Fred was the only authority.
He was the sole executor of Andy's estate.
I asked Fred about the painting, and he said, "Yes, but I've already written on the back of the painting.
It is a Warhol.
" For me, that's it.
That's the end of the story.
Anderson: After owning his "Red Self Portrait" for 12 years, Joe decided to sell it, but first he was required to get it verified by the Warhol Foundation's Authentication Board.
So, you submitted the painting for authentication? And what happened to the painting then? Well, it came back with this nasty stamp on the back, saying "Denied.
This is not by Andy Warhol.
" Sorry, they stamped the word "Denied" with ink onto the painting? The back of the painting? Which seeped through the picture.
It was very naughty.
So what do you think decides which pieces get authenticated and which get denied? Whatever makes the most money.
Anderson: At some point, you had to step down from the battle.
You know, they said, publicly, "We won't stop.
" Simon-Whelan: This is like a beast that's just rolling upon itself.
I mean, it's a-- it's a commodity, and people don't want to see it collapse, so people will protect that.
Anderson: This battle was a direct result of Warhol's own process, limiting the role of the artist in the making of the art.
As Warhol's work became some of the most expensive in the world, the stakes of authentication increased drastically.
I met with British artist, Paul Stephenson, and leading art market analyst, Marion Maneker, to discuss this.
Many people date the current art market from 1998, when the "Orange Marilyn" was sold at auction for a record price.
That sort of woke up the world to the value of these works.
The first phase of this market run-up from about 2004 to 2007, Warhol led the way.
Maneker: There are buyers in Asia.
There are buyers in South America.
There are buyers in the gulf states.
It has an appeal that very few other artists do.
Warhol was the first artist who was talking about what makes a Warhol, his own authenticity.
And that's one of the issues with the art market.
Are these actual works? Or are these copies because he wasn't there to approve them? Anderson: With individual Warhol's now selling in the tens of millions, we asked Donald Sheridan, who made many of the artist's prints, what makes a real Warhol.
These are the Retrospective Series.
So they're Warhol revisiting his most iconic images.
Anderson: Who decided that the acetates would be in those positions? You know, anybody who was working there, we were basically allowed to play.
Anderson: He didn't take the picture.
He didn't choose this color scheme.
You decided the composition, and then you guys printed it - on your own? - Yeah.
- That could still be a Warhol? - Oh, yeah.
He knew it was gonna be a Warhol, Andy did, you know.
He knew that we could give him good Warhols.
"Just make it pretty.
" And you gave good Warhol? Yes.
(all laughing) Anderson: Because Warhol wasn't there when many of his works were made, we wanted to see if we could make a Warhol 30 years after the artist's death, using the original acetates that were used in some of his most iconic works.
Stephenson: Warhol's "Jackie" was a photograph taken by Jacques Lowe in Hyannis Port, then appropriated by Warhol, and then he had it enlarged into this size acetate.
At that point, he worked on this acetate by hand, adapted it, made it the way he wanted to make it.
You can still see actually, just here on the sides, her hair flicks up quite a way out.
Warhol's cut it right down in.
In producing these acetates, and then, blacking out bits of them, that's-- that's the only stage where he's actually physically involved in-- in the process.
- Wow.
- In terms of this image, yeah.
How much do these sell for now? If a 40-by-40-inch "Jackie" came up for sale today $40 million plus.
This is probably in excess of 200 or $300 million worth of paintings that you could make with these.
Stephenson: So, he'd put the small acetate on here, this light shines through the acetate, through this lens and into the other room where he'd make it the correct size.
Anderson: The lab is one of the last in the world still able to carry out the exact same process Warhol's printers employed.
In East London, Paul has also managed to track down the exact same paint that Warhol used for his background.
It was so old it was about to get thrown out.
It was on sale at half price.
Naphthol Red is, uh, the lips on a "Marilyn.
" This is Chairman Mao's face.
(Anderson laughs) Stephenson: Yellow-Yellow Orange Azo.
Um, and this is late '70s Acro-Violet, which is the face color for Jackie O.
Marilyn, all the self-portraits.
This has got "Copyright 1980" on it, so this was a kind of a cool thing to find, cause they don't make that anymore.
There's only a limited amount of this-- this stuff left that was made.
This might be the last pot of-- of Acro-Violet left in the world.
Anderson: The next thing we need is one of Warhol's original printers.
Alexander Heinrici now works in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
He was Warhol's primary silk-screen printer from 1974 to '76.
I saw him almost every day when I worked with him.
And what do you think of, like, the Warhol idea of-- of-- almost removing the hand of the artist from-- from the process.
Oh, he totally changed everything.
I mean, that-- that's his, uh, forte.
I mean, that's what he did.
I was just lucky to be his silk-screen printer, you know? At the time.
(chuckles) Yeah, yeah.
Anderson: Can you explain that? Like, exactly what's happening now? Heinrici: Well, the screen is coated with emulsion, which is photo sensitive.
We put the positive on, and then we expose it with ultra-violet light that will harden the emulsion where the light hits it, and leave it soft where it doesn't.
The emulsion breaks out where it's soft, and stays where it's hard.
Is this exactly the same as the process that you did back then? Yeah.
Okay, let's go.
(indistinct muttering) You got it? Over here.
This looks like Warhol now.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
(chuckles) Well, we're learning, right? Not many more years, and we'll be pros.
(all laughing) Andy Warhol looks a scream Hang him on my wall Andy Warhol, Silver Screen Can't tell them apart at all Anderson: We showed it to Rainer Crone, who was the world's leading Warhol scholar, and author of Andy's first catalogue raisonné.
Crone: Whoa! That's incredible.
That's how you wanted to surprise me.
Wow.
Beautiful, no? Fantastic.
Same acetate, same printer, Alex Heinrici, same everything.
In your mind, are these-- you know, how close are these to Warhol's? They are fan-- this is fantastic.
Yeah.
What do you think Andy would have made of the idea of recreating these decades after his death? It's good! Good! It's in his concept, in his traditions.
So, he has the idea, - and then anybody can make them? - Yeah.
- As many prints as they want? - Yes.
That's what he wanted.
Anderson: Since the Warhol controversy, numerous other artists have their own issues with authentication.
Two of the biggest galleries have been fooled with older works.
Sotheby's admitted that two paintings worth over $10 million they'd authenticated and sold were fake.
The Guggenheim had to do the same with a painting in its collection.
After its legal battle, the Warhol Foundation disbanded its Authentication Board leaving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Warhol's in doubt.
Markets like gold and art are about confidence.
You buy something with the hope that you'll be able to resell it.
And the real question of its value is your confidence that there are other buyers behind you.
One of the things that the art world needs is a better system for people to be able to say, "Yes, this is real.
"
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