Discussion Questions -- Oprah's Documentary Club: "Serving Life"

Yesterday I watched Serving Life (2011), the July pick for the Oprah Winfrey Network's (OWN's) documentary club.  This film follows four inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary maximum-security prison--a.k.a. Angola--as they train to be volunteers in the prison hospice.

The film includes scenes of dying patients; for parents thinking of watching this film with children, it's most appropriate for high schoolers and above.  Here are a few questions that can get you talking before/during/after the film:

1. Did this film change your perception of a maximum-security prison and/or of its prisoners?

 

2. If you were screening prisoners to determine who should be selected as hospice volunteers, what questions would you ask?

 

3. Do you think that inmates who work as hospice volunteers should have their sentences lessened?  

 

4. As the film asks, "Can [prisoners] claim redemption serving life?"

 

5. What do you think are the most valuable lessons the prisoners learn from working in a hospice?

 

6. Why do you think it is so important for "Boston" to tell his son that it was his (Boston's) fault that he ended up in prison?

 

7. If you haven't heard of hospice care before, research and read about a non-prison hospice.  How does it compare to Angola's hospice?

 

(Here, in an earlier post, are discussion questions for June's documentary: Sons of Perdition.)