Join WTTW and award-winning filmmaker Lynn Novick − whose film credits with her colleague Ken Burns include The U.S. and the Holocaust, Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition − for a preview and discussion of her new film Crime and Punishment in America. The four-part, eight-hour docuseries, executive produced by Ken Burns and Sam Pollard, and narrated by Keith David, will premiere over four consecutive nights on all WTTW platforms beginning Monday, November 16, 2026. The PBS extended trailer is available here and a first look from the film is available here.

Crime and Punishment in America offers a sweeping look at the American criminal justice system, from the origins of prisons and policing to our continued fascination with crime, and traces the contours of our imperfect system and how it influences nearly all parts of our society: the media, economics and politics.

Immediately following the screening, Brandis Friedman, the Alexandra and John Nichols Chief Correspondent and Anchor for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, will moderate a conversation with Lynn Novick; Kevin Boyle, the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University; and Nicholas Crayton, featured in WTTW’s FIRSTHAND: Life After Prison multiplatform series.

Major funding was provided by The Atlantic Philanthropies, Emerson Collective, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Park Foundation. Major funding was also provided by the following members of The Better Angels Society: The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund; The Just Trust for Education; Allan and Shelley Holt; The Tow Foundation; and the Sozosei Foundation. Additional support was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, Ford Foundation | JustFilms, and by The Better Angels Society members: John and Catherine Debs; Timothy Fazio; Lise Strickler and Mark Gallogly; the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund (Laurie M. Tisch Foundation Inc); Gilchrist and Amy Berg; the Carson Family Charitable Trust; Mauree Jane and Mark W. Perry; the Segal Family Foundation; and Mark A. Tracy.