For those who comfort themselves with the notion that the torture of political prisoners is a foreign phenomenon, Through the Wire will be a sobering revelation. This powerful film documents, with Amnesty International corroboration, the cases of three female prisoners in a controversial high security unit in the basement of the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky. A regular program of isolation, surveillance, and sexual humiliation contributed to the psychological and physical deterioration of the three, who had received sentences of unprecedented length for politically motivated crimes. Interviews with the prisoners and their families offer an intense exploration of what it means to be political, and a prisoner, in the U.S.A. Lexington's Female High Security Unit was shut down by a Federal Judge and then, when that ruling was overturned, became the model for at least sixteen similar prisons. The story is not over yet.