The House I Live In (Jarecki, 2012) explores the Jailing system in the United States. Jarecki uses interviews, real storiesm,  history to create this fascinating story. The most important message I received from this story is that no one, including people in power positions, are particularly okay with the situation of the jail system and the drug laws that are in place. When the media portrays a drug bust, they sensationalize the story and portray the drug dealer as the primary bad guy and the judge and officers as good guys. The fact is, no one in this scenario is the good guy. Jarecki does an incredible thing by documenting this. You never hear of a cop or judge resigning because of the harsh laws or feeling bad. Because they receive incredible payment, drug busts have been incentivized. The officers and Judge being interviewed tell the story unheard. The Judge has no choice, the law is in place, hence why so many judges have resigned, they feel terrible and feel like the sentence the give is unjust for the crime. The officers discussed the dangers of incentivizing officers to bust people for drugs. Officers receive more money for drug busts and can find and close cases much quicker than a murder or rape. They also have families to feed and bills to pay. This puts rape and murder on the back burner.  Jarecki’s stories he exposes are what is not shown to the media. He gains sympathy when exposing a talented inmate playing the guitar with his mother to really sway the audience. His interview techniques give the viewer sympathy to the people involved and also make you feel like the prison system is corrupt in America. If it is corrupt or is not corrupt does not matter, but Jarecki’s decision to frame the film like this gives a sympathetic feeling to the audience member in an effort to skew the viewer’s previous view points about this situation.