The Franchise follows formerly incarcerated advocate Alejo Rodriguez to expose mass incarceration as a profit-driven enterprise. The South Bronx is the most incarcerated community in New York, driving over 10% of the state’s prison population. The film exposes how the nutrition, real estate, and surveillance industries are intertwined with state prisons and law enforcement agencies, all of which depend on the continued arrest and incarceration of residents from the South Bronx. 

The film connects the displacement of Black, Latinx and Caribbean families in the South Bronx with that of farmworkers in the Hudson Valley who service New York’s prison food contracts, shining a light on how unjust and concentrated imprisonment contributes to the state’s multi-billion dollar annual prison enterprise and perpetuates generational cycles of harm. At the same time, Alejo’s journey and the leaders he meets reveal deeply rooted movements for human rights and freedom.