Week 6
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Woody Allen as inmate Virgil Starkwell

risons Through the Lens of Hollywood

Since most people have never been in a prison or jail as an arrestee or inmate, or even toured a correctional facility, the public is very dependent on media portrayals for its knowledge of prison conditions and inmate subcultures. While Hollywood has had great difficulty in updating its outdated stereotypes of prisons and jails, news media accounts of prison life have been hampered by the inability of reporters to access prisons and institutional efforts to censor inmate communication with the media.

The Warehouse Era: The Creation of a Stereotype

Prisons have not been a popular topic for the Hollywood film. Many more crime dramas, police stories, and court-centered films than prison dramas have been made. However, once Hollywood did begin make a few prison films in the 1930s (as part of their attempt to deal realistically with the Depression and its accompanying problems), a stereotyped image of prison life emerged that would reappear over and over again for the next 50 years. The original 1930s image was surprisingly close to the reality of prison existence.

In the 1930s the American prison system was still firmly entrenched in what penologists have called the "warehouse era" of American corrections. The rehabilitative hopes of the two great 19th century American prison experiments in Pennsylvania and New York had been dashed. The Reformatory Movement had also come and gone, without fundamentally changing the prison regime. Most prison administrators hoped to merely turn out ex-convicts who were not worse human beings than when they entered the penitentiary. Rehabilitating criminals was the hope only of prison reformers and enlightened criminologists.

The warehouse prison system emerged with the end of the PA solitary confinement model and the Auburn (NY) system of congregate silence. The warehouse prison had a number of basic traits. Warden and guards no longer had absolute control of the prison. Inmates had wrestled a considerable amount of power away from the administration. The warden now ruled ultimately only through tacit inmate consent. Inmates created a prison social system or subculture whose effect was to maintain the institution's status quo. The status quo that was acceptable to both inmate elites and administration, because both found the system that emerged advantageous. Inmate elites could control flow of economic goods, contraband items, and special privileges. In exchange for the administration's silent complicity with the inmate subculture, inmates made sure the rest of the population stayed in line. Such inmate pecking orders remained in place in America prisons until the 1950s and 1960s, when major changes were introduced in the prison system.

As far back as the 1930s, the Hollywood film industry created a stereotype of prison life in an all-male prison. While the stereotype may have in some way approximated the real prisons of the 1930s, Hollywood stuck with its type of portrayal long after the American prison system had undergone dramatic change beginning in the 1960s. Many of the prison films which are made today are historical in nature, allowing Hollywood to fall back on the old clichés. The film that first created the model for later prison dramas was The Big House (1930). Others that followed included The Criminal Code (1930), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), and Each Dawn I Die (1939).

Classic Hollywood Prison Films

The first generation of Hollywood prison films were a response to a series of real-life prison riots that broke out around the country in 1929, including one at the famous Auburn Penitentiary in NY.

The producers' hope for The Big House was that it would lead to actual reform of squalid prison conditions. In this sense, the prison drama genre falls clearly within the Hollywood tradition for making "message" films aimed at awakening the public and moving them toward social action.

However, the screenplay for The Big House was written largely from the point of view of the then warden of San Quentin, who had been interviewed extensively by Hollywood scriptwriters. The warden played by Lewis Stone was based on the real warden, James Holohan. The film did not really concentrate on prison conditions or their need for change, but on how people respond to their prison experiences. In this sense, prison films tested the mettle of men, as did war movies or westerns. Hollywood's image of the prison world was one which tested the stamina of men, and found some weak and others able to withstand every degradation the authorities and other inmates hurled their way. Prison was the ideal place to prove that the silent stoic macho male could survive physically and emotionally unscathed from the worst of all possible worlds. For example, the isolation of solitary confinement was seen as the ultimate test of a man's will. The bad food, the overcrowding, and the brutalizing routine of everyday prison life would either bring out the worst or the best in a man. While others might crack up, turn rat or informant, or prove that they were unreformably evil (and usually have to be killed off before the film's end), the film's hero was always the strong silent male who did his time, caused no trouble for fellow inmates, took no quarter if attacked, but always remained uncooptable by the guards and warden. His internalized value system or moral code was not to be mistaken for the code of the administration to whom the "right guy" remained intractably opposed. He might in many ways be considered by the warden to be the perfect inmate, but could never be mistaken for inmates who aided or abetted the staff such as "rats" and "stool pigeons." The "convict code" was treated positively in the film. Inmates did not squeal on other inmates; those that did were ostracized or worse.

The Big House also created many of the other stock film characters that showed up in most of the later prison films: (1) the semi-hysterical weakling victimized by both guards and fellow inmates; (2) the informant or "rat" who squeals on the other inmates in exchange for privileges or extra rations; (3) the ineffective warden unable to control the prison without inmate assistance; (4) the guard who doles out unnecessary punishment and brutalizes the weaker inmates; (5) the strong-willed inmate leader always ready to riot if they are pushed too far, and (6) the good con who remains a stoic loner, puts up with everything the system throws at him, and is looked up to by the other inmates.

In 1931 The Criminal Code was made, directed by Howard Hawks. It contained a similar cast of stereotyped characters. Hawks also did not attack the prison as an institution because he was more interested in picturing it as an arena for interpersonal dramas concerning the moral evolution of the inmates. The Criminal Code had originally been a Broadway play based on the idea that criminologist Donald Clemmer had called prisonization. This referred to the fact that the prison experience was so devastating in its impact in acculturating new inmates that it had the effect of making people worse instead of reforming them. Once the new "fish" had internalized the inmate subcultural norms, a return to society would inevitably result in recidivism. In the play, an innocent young man wrongly sent to prison ends up a prison killer by the play's end. The movie version, however, has a different ending, (as do many Hollywood transformations of plays and novels) muting the liberal social reform message of the play. Once again, prison is seen as an institution that takes the measure of a man rather than one that dehumanizes him. Again, the film stressed themes such as "no one squeals to the guards." Those that do are taken care of when they are found out.

1932 brought I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang starring Paul Muni. Chain gangs and prison farms were much more frequently used in the American South, and this film depicted such practices in Georgia. Muni was pictured as an innocent victim of circumstances, forced to rob by a vagrant, who is killed by the police. His defense lost, he is sentenced. A famous scene involved a strap beating of an inmate. We never see the beating, only the psychological terror on the faces of those forced to witness it and a shadow display of the beating on the wall. Of all the prison films that were produced during Hollywood's formative years, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang was the one which had the most social impact on actually changing prison conditions. It was based on a true story of a Depression hobo caught up in an unfortunate incident, who escaped the chain gang to become an honest, productive member of society, only to be returned to Georgia when his real identity was uncovered. The film's account of the brutal chain gang system in the American south led to its abolishment by Federal edict in 1937. Chain gangs would not return until the mid-1990s, when conservative politicians in Southern states found they could win votes by depicting prisons as "country clubs" and inmates as "vacationers" on the dole.

Are Women's Prisons Just Like Men's?

When it comes to women's prisons, Hollywood was remarkably silent until the 1950's when several films were made: Caged and I Want to Live, the latter based a true story about the first female executed in California. In Caged an innocent young woman guilty of only being so in love with her husband that she aides him in a stick-up is placed in a prison filled with stock characters: the ineffective warden; brutal matrons; career criminals; and women obviously without any concerns for their children or families. It is hard to tell this isn't a male prison. While the heroine fights off the system bravely for a time, she eventually succumbs to the brutalization and responds by becoming an incorrigible felon herself.

The 1980s and 1990s womens' prison films have been largely "exploitation" films. Almost all seem to contain the word "heat," a term borrowed from the porno genre. Examples include Chained Heat (1983), Caged Heat (1974), Caged Heat 2 (1994), Caged Heat 3000 (1995), and Red Heat (1985). These films, like porn movies, feature lesbianism, dominance and submission themes, and scantily clad females. We do not learn much about the real lives of women behind bars.

 

Amy Madigan played the inmate

An exception would be Love Child (1982), which was based on a true story of a Florida DOC inmate who became pregnant as a result of a liason with a corections officer, and fought to be allowed to keep her newborn with her in prison.

Ethnographic criminological studies of women's prisons have long documented major differences between male and female inmate subcultures. The most famous of these were done by Rose Giallombardo. She found major differences including extensive concerns for children and family, a nonpredatory homosexual culture driven by deprivation, the inmate creation of family-like groupings, and treatment of women by staff based upon their age and "sassiness" rather than the seriousness of their crimes.

How Have Prisons Changed?

Prisons have changed dramatically since the 1930s as a result of a number of factors and forces. Together these factors have dramatically altered the nature of day-today prison life and inmate subculture. While a detailed analysis of the impact of each of these features is beyond the scope of this lecture (See my Corrections course syllabus), the following must be considered.

1. The Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s.
2. The growth of the Black Muslim movement within prisons.
3. The introduction and then rejection of the "medical model" in corrections.
4. The opening up of the federal courts to inmate petitions.
5. The resulting takeover of many state prison systems by the federal judiciary
6. The emergence of unionism among corrections officers and staff.
7. The massive influx of additional prisoners from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s.
8. The end of indeterminate sentencing and early parole.

The latter two show no sign of abating and are being driven by conservative crime-control politicians and anti-drug hysteria. The result is that the United States has one of the highest per capita prison populations in the world, and that population is serving some of the longest sentences comparatively.

While prisons have always had their share of violence and mayhem, the levels of violence within these institutions have risen dramatically since the 1930s. Until recently, the inmate subculture, while sometimes brutal, in effect controlled the prisoners on behalf of the administrators. For example, Texas institutions had building tenders who maintained control and kept troublemakers from harming other inmates. Other states had similar positions. The segregation of prisoners by race, particularly in southern states, kept interracial conflicts to a minimum. The Civil Rights movement put an end to official racial segregation, gangs formed where the principle cohesive factor was race, and gang-based violence became commonplace in many prisons. In Texas a series of lawsuits (e.g., Ruiz v. Estelle) put an end to the building tender system creating a power vacuum within the prisons that the gangs quickly capitalized on. Inmates not affiliated with any of the gangs now find themselves subject to victimization by any or all of the gangs. The "right guy" doing his time, not bothering anyone else is largely a thing of the past. About the only way such individuals can now survive the prison situation is to ask to be placed in solitary confinement, where they will do their time monotonously day after day with little interaction with prison programs and staff. In the Santa Fe, New Mexico riot of the early 1980s the inmate rioters headed straight for these cells and systematically killed the inmates there, claiming they were all snitches or in league with the administration. Prison officials have now concluded that the most dangerous inmates must also be placed in administrative segregation. The federal system opened control unit prisons such as Marion and kept inmates in permanent lock-down status.

Take the Money and Run: End of An Era?

Imitating Dillinger, but with a gun made out of soap

While the American prison system underwent numerous changes in the 1960s and 1970s, the Hollywood prison film continued to merely copy its 1930s stereotypes. The opportunity to break from these stereotypes was offered by Woody Allen, in his first feature film, Take the Money and Run (1969). Allen parodied the Hollywood prison film, from 1930s' prison dramas like I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang through such 1960s films as Cool Hand Luke (1967). Memorable scenes included a jailer whipping a shadow on the wall rather than an inmate, an inmate being put in a sweat box with an insurance salesman, and a racially-mixed escapee chain gang claiming to be cousins. One impact of Allen's film was to drive home the point of how little prison dramas had changed in a 40-year period.

Following Allen's deconstruction, Hollywood could have moved on and updated its imagery, but little changed. Many of the prison stories Hollywood chose to tell were set in historical prisons rather than in the present, so that the old stereotypes could still be used. These included Birdman From Alcatraz (1962), Escape From Alcatraz (1979), Mrs. Soffel (1984), Shawshank Redemption (1994), Murder in the First (1995). Even the dramatic story of Malcolm X (1992) took nearly 30 years before it was brought to the screen. Hurricane (1999) features Denzel Washington playing Hurricane Carter. He lives a stoic life while in prison, able to survive anything the prison system can dish out. 

Some of these stories certainly needed to be told, even if the facts on which they may have been based had been uncovered years before. Brubaker (1980) is a good example.

 

Brubaker was based on the discoveries of Tom Merton, who ran the Arkansas prison system for a short time in the early 1970s. He uncovered systematic abuse of inmates, inmates buried in unmarked graves, deplorable conditions, plus graft and fraud in the use of work-lease programs.

Robert Redford as Brubaker entered the prison disguised as an inmate

As a result of Merton's activities, the Arkansas system made a number of reforms, but ultimately he was replaced.

Oz (1997-200?), HBO's second attempt to make prison drama a weekly program (this first was Maximum Security (1984)), makes ethnicity the primary factor of prison life. In that sense it is more realistic than a number of other prison efforts. Particularly interesting are the ongoing struggles between Black Muslims and black gang bangers for control of the hearts and minds of the black inmate population. In addition, white supremacist, Latino, and Italian mafia-type gangs are featured. Forced sex, drugs, and violence are everyday occurrences despite the fact that the prison unit is supposed to be a special monitored unit (built upon a vague combination of panopticon and medical model philosophies).

The 'Prison Break' Formula: Punishment Without Crime By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Published: April 10, 2006 The best escapes are found in war movies where P.O.W.'s bond as they ingeniously conceal their nighttime digging from the enemy. Prison breaks, on the other hand, are most satisfying when offset by the possibility of last-minute reprieve, preferably by a phone call from the governor. One reason "Prison Break" on Fox is so much fun to watch is that it mixes the classic elements of both genres: wartime camaraderie and the long walk to the electric chair. Amaury Nolasco as Fernando Sucre, trying to cover up evidence of digging on Fox's "Prison Break." That virtue is also the series' biggest flaw. Fox wants viewers to root for the convicts the way they would for allied soldiers in "The Great Escape" or "Stalag 17" and accordingly paints them all as either innocent or, at worst, only a little guilty. The creators of "Prison Break" even went so far as to make one inmate an Iraq war veteran who was set up by his superior officer after he tried to report incidents of prisoner abuse; the veteran drifted into crime back home because he couldn't find an honest job after his dishonorable (and unjust) discharge. "Prison Break," like "24," requires a childlike willingness to suspend disbelief and enjoy the artful prolongation of a preposterously unrealistic plot (although both dramas weave in increasingly less farfetched subplots: conspiracies that reach all the way to the White House). But part of the trick is blending fantasy with realistic touches — terrorists, biochemical weapons and office colleagues with bad hair and testy personalities. "Prison Break," which was shot inside a now closed 19th-century prison in Illinois where the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was briefly held, traffics in sadistic guards, shivs and the specter of prison rape. Yet it lacks the nerve to showcase characters who are rightfully convicted. And that, more than F.C.C. standards of decency, is the real limit of network drama. HBO and other cable networks are free to glorify mobsters and convicts in a way that their broadcast rivals cannot. Depictions of sex and violence keep getting more explicit on network dramas, but crime still cannot pay. That does not mean that "Prison Break" is not worth watching. For all its constraints, the series is as suspenseful and addictive as "24" or Showtime's "Sleeper Cell." The series began in August with a twist: Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) essentially broke into Fox River State Penitentiary to help his wrongly convicted brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), tunnel out and avoid the electric chair. Michael tattooed the blueprints of the prison on his torso, staged a bank robbery and ended up behind bars, only to discover obstacles far worse than bolts and steel doors: gang rivalries, race riots, corrupt guards and a treacherous Vice President of the United States, Caroline Reynolds (Patricia Wettig.) Helped and sometimes hindered by the small band of inmates he recruited, Michael made a near-miraculous way through most of the prison hazards, but then the series went on a long hiatus. It resumed in March and has already brought Lincoln to the brink of execution. The tunnel and last-ditch appeals by his lawyers failed. Lincoln had been strapped into the electric chair and fitted with a foam-lined helmet when the red button on the warden's telephone finally flashed; at the last second, a judge granted a delay to review new evidence. And last week the drama took a "Lost"-like detour into the past, fleshing out in exculpatory flashbacks how Lincoln was set up to take the blame for the murder of the vice president's brother, and revealing how some of Michael's prison comrades were locked up in the first place. All are innocent, or at least not very guilty. Michael's cellmate, Fernando Sucre (Amaury Nolasco), robbed a liquor store so he could afford to marry the woman he loves. Only Theodore Bagwell (Robert Knepper), known as T-Bag, a rapist, serial killer and white supremacist, really belongs behind bars, and even he has a redeeming side. He seemed genuinely in love with the woman who turned him in after recognizing his mug shot on an episode of "America's Most Wanted." The one twist is that the compassionate prison doctor, Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies), actually is guilty of a crime: she turned out to be a reformed drug addict who while on duty would inject morphine stolen from her hospital's storeroom. Tonight, the story resumes in real time. Michael and his accomplices have to find a new escape route, while Lincoln's lawyer and ex-girlfriend, Veronica Donovan (Robin Tunney), must keep trying to find the real killer. And most of all, the series' creators need to delay resolution. "Prison Break" has proved successful enough to warrant a second season. It took four for Dr. Richard Kimble to find the one-armed man on the original "Fugitive." Jack Bauer is well into his fifth season of saving the free world. There is no reason for Lincoln to break free or be exonerated anytime soon: in fact, the later the better.

Comparisons

In comparison to the treatment inmates receive in American prisons, Hollywood has also focused on American's imprisoned overseas or sent to prisoner-of-war camps. In these films torture, mutilation, and death predominate. Examples include Bridge On the River Kwai (1957), Stalag 17 (1953), Deer Hunter (1978), Midnight Express (1978), and Hanoi Hilton (1987). In 1996, TNT featured Andersonville, a drama based on the notorious Civil War prison camp run by the Confederacy. This story of horrible atrocities committed by one group of Americans upon other Americans had long been forgotten. Women in concentration camp films include Caged Fury (1984) and Paradise Road (1987)

In the future prisons will only get worse. So predicts Hollywood. In Escape From New York (1981) convicts are simply dropped into Manhattan, the whole island having become a prison. However, there are no keepers. Inmates are free to set up their own society, which they do. Survival of the fittest rules. Escape from L.A. (1996) repeats the scenario. In Fortress (1993), prisoners are forced to wear devices around their necks (similar to contemporary electronic monitoring equipment given to house arrestees). But, there is a difference. If they wander too far from the prison yard or too far from a convict partner, they the necklaces will automatically kill them. Finally, in Judge Dredd (1995), Sylvester Stallone becomes cop, judge, and executioner in a future populated by unredeemable criminals.

Changes in prison architecture and supervision style like those associated with the new generation jail philosophy have been entirely missed. This is not to mention the fact that few prisons today contain traditional cells with bars, concrete, and metal fixtures. The distinctions between maximum, medium, and minimum security facilities are rarely depicted, as most Hollywood prisons appear to be maximum security. Fed a steady diet of such prisons, it is no wonder citizens consider institutions in which inmates can watch TV or lift weights "country clubs" and support legislators who would eliminate even the last vestiges of outside civilization from prisons.

The Death Penalty

Hollywood has rarely taken on the death penalty as a serious topic. This is somewhat surprising given the number of criminals who are simply killed off before a movie ends without trial or conviction. Probably the most thought provoking movie on the death penalty was the recent Dead Man Walking (1995).

A Catholic sister, played by Susan Sarandon, agreed to aid a convict (Sean Penn) prepare for his own impending execution, including facing up to his complicity in the crimes. She also tried to assist both his family and survivors of the victims, an extremely difficult task. However, this allowed the viewer to see the phenomenon through the eyes of a broad spectrum of opinions. The prolonged scene showing the carrying out of lethal injection may lead some to rethink whether the 8th Amendment's "cruel and unusual" phrase might cover this "procedure."

Death Row has been featured in recent film's such as The Green Mile (1999) and Monster's Ball (2001). The first is about a falsely accused man on death row, while the latter uses an execution to set up a relationship between a corrections officer present at the event and the inmate's widow.

Additional Resources:

Prison Flicks
http://www.prisonflicks.com/

Discussion Question:

Copyright 04/10/2006 Cecil Greek