Prison Decayed: How Prison Films Support the Expansion of the Penal Estate

This article was published on the NMP website in 2006

by Paul Mason, Cardiff University

Introduction

Ten years ago, Michael Howard, then British Home Secretary delivered his speech to the Conservative party faithful at their annual conference:

Prison works. It ensures we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists - and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice...This may mean that more people will go to prison. I do not flinch from that. We shall no longer judge the success of our justice by a fall in our prison population. (Michael Howard, Conservative Party Conference, October 1995.)

Two years previously, his counterpart in the Labour Party and then Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair, was writing in The New Statesman that Labour should become 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'(1993: 100). The increased politicisation of British criminal justice policy, over the last ten years in particular, has been matched with a correlative hardening of penal sanctions, a development mirrored in the United States (Garland 2001; Mathiesen 2000; Wacquant 2005; 2006), to the extent that now 'a failure to talk tough on crime is akin to political suicide' (Newburn and Jones 2005). Such a stance has meant that in November 2005, the prison population in England and Wales was 77,421, the second highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe (Prison Reform Trust 2005).

However, the contention that high prison rates mean lower crime is fundamentally flawed and remains a myth (Christie 2000; Dyer 2000; Jacobson 2005; Parenti 1999). This, coupled with the injustice and inhumanity of a system which locks up the socially excluded (Prison Reform Trust, 2005), a disproportionate number of ethnic minorities (Home Office, 2004) and those with mental health problems (Prison Reform Trust, 2005) clearly demonstrates the pressing need for alternatives to and the abolition of the prison system.

Many see the increased punitiveness in criminal justice policy as a populist reaction to the problems of crime (Garland 2001; Hutton 2005; Johnstone 2000; Loader 2005; Pratt 2000; Roberts et al. 2002; Ryan 2006). That pressure from an angry public, mediated through tabloid headlines, demands more displays of repressive punishment such as longer prison sentences, boot camps, tighter controls on sex offenders, anti-social behaviour orders and so on. Punishment becomes crueller, more emotive and ostentatious (Pratt 2000) as public insecurities about crime and the criminal intensify.

However, what has been lacking in this analysis is any engagement with media representations of prison and punishment, how and why they may contribute to the punitive in the public sphere. Only Mathiesen (Mathiesen 2000; 2001; 2003) has offered any meaningful thoughts on how media discourses around prison may intervene in the penal debate, and these are relatively brief. Adopting a similar position to those writing on penal populism, he posits that changes in government discourse around criminal justice policy have shifted from legal and moral values to opportunistic and media/public driven ones. The nature of public debate around crime and punishment has consequently altered, no longer predicated upon 'principled legitimation' (Mathiesen 2003: 3). He further suggests that media reporting magnifies violent and serious crime such that prison is constructed as the only solution:

In the newspapers, on television, in the whole range of media, the prison is simply not recognised as a fiasco, but as a necessary if not always fully successful method of reaching its purported goals. The prison solution is taken as paradigmatic, so that a rising crime rate is viewed as still another sign showing that prison is needed.'
(Mathiesen 2000: 144)

While Mathiesen's argument is a surely correct, it would be strengthen by an examination of the media coverage of prisons to which he refers. I offer here an examination of one prison discourse in popular culture: the prison film. I will argue that, over the last ten years the prison film has represented incarceration around two elements, both of which significantly impact upon debates around penal reform and abolition. Firstly, the graphic exploitation of violence and sexual assault in prison films is predominantly depicted voyeuristically and remains severed from any abolitionist or reformist context. While scenes of explicit brutality may present opportunities for the prison film to challenge the very existence of the penal estate, any oppositional discourse is subjugated to the lurid mise en scene of violence and sexual assault. Secondly, the representation of inmates as dehumanised other and deserving of harsh treatment, coupled with an avoidance of abolitionist narratives in death row films reaffirms the prison as the cornerstone of criminal justice sanctions. My analysis looks at English language prison films given a cinematic release between 1st January 1995 and 31st December 2005. This amounts to 28 films which are listed at the end.

1. EXPLOTING VIOLENCE, AVOIDING CONDEMNATION

Many of the films in the sample represent prison as a brutal, uncivilised place which punishes, degrades and humiliates. Potentially, such a construction of the penal system suggests a discourse of reform. Namely, an exploration of the futility and inhumanity of incarceration, made visible by such texts, presents an opportunity to raise the profile in public debate and mobilise opinion towards reform and abolition of the prison industrial complex.
 
However, a closer reading of the sample reveals not only a reluctance to challenge the existing penal system, but a scoptophilic treatment of violence, rape and death. Such acts are frequently presented in narratives across the sample, rarely framed within any considered or developed critique of prison. Instead, these elements offer are located within an exploitative agenda, in which vivid violence, rape and other sexual assaults are foregrounded. These are constructed in two principle ways, through pre-emptive talk and iconography; and in graphic displays.
 
PRE-EMPTIVE TALK, FEAR AND PRISON ICONOGRAPHY

In the sample analysed, prison is habitually and, crucially, immediately constructed within a discourse of violence and fear. The films define prison through its capacity for brutality and to instill terror. It is constructed in this way from the outset and, as I discuss later, rarely shifts or challenges this initial construction. Such a discourse is frequently built visually and aurally through the early scenes of prison. This often occurs via long shots of the prison façade accompanied by aggressive rap or rock music (Down Time, dir. Sean Wilson, 2001; A Letter From Death Row, dir. Marvin Baker & Bret Michaels 1998; Slam, 1998; Prison Song, dir. Darnel Martin, 2003) or the doom-laden orchestral score (Brokedown Palace or Just Cause, dir. Arne Glimcher, 1995). Alternatively, the viewer experiences the first steps inside the prison from the point of view of the newly-convicted inmate as they are processed through the system.

In The Mean Machine (dir. Barry Skolnick, 2001) for example, Danny Meehan, the film's protagonist, is shot walking towards the camera, along a corridor. When the scene cuts, the camera has switched behind him as he walks up the steps and into the main prison where he, and consequently the audience, is greeted by a cacophony of noise and abuse from other inmates shouting directly into the camera. This scene is very similar to the entrance into the main prison of newly convicted Slim in Down Time, and variations on this scene are to be found in Slam, Prison Song, A Letter From Death Row and Animal Factory. In the latter, the entry of new inmate Ron Decker to prison is again shot from his point of view, as the camera pans round the prison exercise yard, inmates are framed in close-up, mostly in vests, heavily tattooed, muscular and lifting weights, or prowling round the yard, staring. The correlation between prison and violence (as well as masculinity) is clearly expounded in these initial constructions of prison.

In other films in the sample, frequently those dealing with death row, the audience is positioned with, and as, the outsider: as a lawyer defending the convicted inmate (Just Cause, The Chamber (dir. James Foley, 1996), Last Dance (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1996)), a friend (Dead Man Walking (dir. Tim Robbins, 1996)) or a journalist (Life of David Gale (dir. Alan Parker, 2003)) but still within the fear/violence discourse. This is accomplished primarily through a focus on security, threat and danger. In all these texts, the visitor is repeatedly seen passing through wire gates, steel doors, metal detectors and other scanning equipment. Aural cues of incarceration are prominent in these scenes: doors slam, buzzers sound, keys jangle, gates creak and footsteps of prison officers echo, all mixed with the foreboding drone of the film's soundtrack. In Just Cause, retired and visible uneasy lawyer Paul Armstrong is asked by a laughing prison guard 'This your first time, Mr Armstrong?' In The Life of David Gale, journalists Bitsey Bloom and Zack Stemmons are taken through a maze of gates, doors and corridors on their way to meet Gale. There are several close-ups of razor wire and a sign which reads "No Hostages Will Exit". Their (and our) guide to the prison then says: 'We have three concerns here - safety, safety and safety. The visitation area is entirely secure, we just ask that you don't touch the glass".
It is not only through these opening scenes that the discourse of prison is formed. Threat and fear are consistently communicated through talk. But like the opening prison scenes, this occurs pre-emptively through inmate exchanges around fears of being beaten or raped; while guards and governors are at pains to remind inmates of the dangers of life inside:

Every day someone gets shanked in here. Every day someone gets beaten up in here. We got predators in here, son. We got people who will cut your throat for nothing at all but a packet of cigarette. You mind your business in here, son - do you understand where you are?
(Prison guard to new inmate, Ray in Slam)

I run a prison full of murderers and rapists. It's my job to discipline them anyway I can. Most of these guys have broken every rule in the book. It's my job to teach them respect. People like you better pray to God that people like me doing my job while they're in there. Because one of these days these scumbags are going to be out on the streets and then you better pray you're not walking down the street - you or one of your self-righteous, liberal friends - or one of these good ol' boys decides he's gonna put a bullet in that pretty head of yours.  (Warden Felcher to Prison Board visitor in A Letter From Death Row)

The dramatic and colloquial language borrowed from prison slang - "shanked" (stabbed) and the reduction of the prison population to "murderers and rapists" and "scumbags" serves to situate the prison firmly within a discourse where prison means constant threat of attacks and fear. These warnings to inmates also act as notifications to the audience of what they can expect to see during the film - explicit and graphic violence contextualised by nothing more than its location: a prison. This is concisely expressed in Prison Song, 'you're gonna have to fight - make no mistake about it - this is jail'.

Rape and sexual assault talk is also prevalent in the sample. In several films, new inmates are referred to as "fresh meat" (Life (dir. Ted Demme, 1999); Down Time, Prison Song). In Animal Factory, the older experienced Earl offers advice to new inmate Ron:

Young man - there are a lot of animals in here - sexual deviants, inverts who might try and pressure you....a young man looking the way you do without a great deal of penitentiary experience might find himself compromised: might find himself in need of a friend.

This advice is echoed by long-standing friend, Frank, to the soon-to-be incarcerated Monty in 25th Hour (dir. Spike Lee, 2002):

This is my advice to you - first figure out who's who. Find the man nobody's protecting and beat him until his eyes bleed. Let them think you're a little bit crazy but respectful too. Respectful of the right man - you're a good looking boy Monty - it won't be easy for you.....We do what we do to survive.

25th Hour is undoubtedly the clearest example of the pre-emptive talk of violence and sexual assault in the sample. The narrative traces the last 24 hours of freedom for Monty Brogan, a man about to begin a seven year sentence for drug dealing. One of the key narratives concerns Monty's anxiety over what awaits him when he reaches prison. Hours before he is due to begin his sentence, he confides his trepidation to Frank, and visualises his first night in prison:

The place is overcrowded - they got bunk beds lined up in the gymnasium to handle the overflow. I'm going in a room with 200 other guys.....So picture his. First night, lights out. The guards are moving out of the space, looking back over their shoulders laughing at me. You are miles from home. Door closes - boom: I'm on the floor; I've got some big guy's knee in my back. I'll give it a little go but they'll be too many of them. Somebody takes a pipe out from under a mattress, starts beating me in the face - not to hurt me, just to knock all my teeth out so I can give him head all out and they don't have to worry about me biting,

Without showing any of this, 25th Hour contributes to the discourse of prison constructed in previous cinematic narratives, where jail is synonymous with sexual assault and interpersonal violence.

These initial scenes, and in the case of 25th Hour the entire film, help to fix the meaning of imprisonment, to frame the discourse of incarceration as cruel and sadistic. However, while such scenes could form part of a critique of prison as a criminal justice sanction - the vindictive and pointlessness of custody - the dominant discourse remains entrenched in the violence itself rather than in denunciation of it.

Many of the 'tag lines' - the soundbites which appears on posters and in trailers further exemplify this: 'On The Inside The Rules Are Brutal And The Stakes Are High' (Animal Factory, dir. Steve Buscemi, 2000); 'Their Graduation Present Was A Trip To Paradise, But They Never Thought They Would Land In Hell' (Brokedown Palace, dir. Jonathan Kaplan, 1999; 'All in Line for a Slice of Devil Pie' (Slam, dir. Marc Levin, 1999).

GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

I do not wish to dwell on detailed accounts of the graphic violence portrayed in virtually all the sample, but its nature and treatment by the texts requires some exploration. I have suggested that the discourse of prison as violent and inhumane not only fixes the meaning of prison at an early stage, but importantly that it is rarely used to critique the role of penality in society. The persistent violence in Animal Factory, Down Time, Fortress II: Re-Entry (dir. Geoff Murphy, 1999), Mean Machine, Prison Song, Under Lock and Key (dir. Henri Charr, 1995) and Undisputed (dir. Walter Hill, 2002) reduces 'the reality of violence into spectacle' (Jarvis 2006: 159). Both the explicit nature of the violence, and its scoptophilic treatment by films in the sample are well illustrated by the first scenes of prison in Mean Machine. After three minutes depicting the arrest of ex-England football star Danny Meehan, the radio announces the news while Meehan is shot. Lit by a red light lying in a police cell:

Newsreader: "Meehan will serve his sentence at Longmarsh high security Prison"

cut to close up of violent fight between two inmates sat at a table, others cheering, then back to close up of Meehan in his cell

Newsreader: "Famous for its rehabilitation programme"

cut back to fight, then back to Meehan

Newsreader: "reformed characters"

cut back to fight and inmates exchanging money, all shown on a CCTV screen in a room where prison officers look on. Cut back to Meehan in cell

Newsreader: "and modern conditions"

Cut to bloodied face and vest of inmate

In addition to set piece brutality - sexual attacks in showers (American History X, Animal Factory, Undisputed and spoken of in The Hurricane (dir. Norman Jewison, 1999)); fights in the dining hall (Brokedown Palace, Fortress II: Re-Entry and Sleepers, for example) and exercise yard (Life, Prison Song, Slam) - violence is represented as casual and frequent. Stabbings, scaldings and slashings occur with such regularity that they become normalised, what Baumann has termed 'the production of moral indifference' (cited in Jarvis 2006: 159).

This indifference towards the brutality in, and indeed of, prison - the silence and absence of challenges to the very existence of prison within the discourse - is replaced, substituted and shrouded by incessant depictions of such violence. This construction of the penal estate is tied in with the second key component of the discourse of incarceration in the sample: the reinforcing of prison as an essential element of the criminal justice.

2. REINFORCING PRISON, SUPPORTING EXECUTION

OTHERING INMATES

The prison film narrative in the sample is centred round the inmate , usually one recently convicted. Prison is experienced through the eyes of this individual, such as their entry into the penal system discussed previously. Frequently, the new inmate is constructed sympathetically from the outset. This is achieved in one of three ways. Firstly, and most evidently through their innocence and consequent wrongful conviction (Under Lock and Key, A Letter From Death Row, Brokedown Palace, A Map of the World, The Hurricane). Secondly, where the inmate has committed the crime, the film offers mitigating circumstances such as a crime of passion in Undisputed and Tomorrow La Scala; or self defence / provocation in Prison Song and Chicago (dir. Rob Marshall, 2002). Thirdly, where there are no mitigating circumstances and the individual is guilty, the sentence appears unnecessarily harsh, often delivered by an inscrutable judge shot in close up. For example, Cindy Liggett is given the death penalty for aiding and abetting a botched robbery in Last Dance; and after stealing $5 from a post office and being sent to Alcatraz, Henry Young spends three years in solitary confinement after trying to escape in Murder In The First. The marginal nature of innocence, guilt and its underlying morality is further explored by 25th Hour in which the convicted Monty Brogan's two friends are revealed as a crooked Wall Street stockbroker and a guilty college teacher, seduced by one of his students. These events and revelations occur in the danger-red hue of a packed nightclub to the sounds of the hottest new talent DJ Dusk: the equivocal time between night and day, light and shade, good and evil.

This sympathetic portrayal of inmate protagonists once again offers the possibility for prison film narratives to explore the injustice and cruelty of incarceration. Through the eyes of an innocent, harshly treated woman or man, the penal system could be exposed. Although ostensibly this appears to be present in the discourse of prison constructed in the sample, it is achieved through a process of representing the rest of the prison population as dehumanised monsters and animals, and consequently as "other" (Greer and Jewkes 2005; Hall 1997). While the prison hero/ine is afforded character, emotional development and agency, the rump of the jail is mere cardboard cut-out and cliché. Consequently, prison is constructed as necessary, to keep these psychotic deviants caged and incapacitated. Despite its empathetic portrayal of, on occasion, several inmates, the meaning of prison is once again framed around danger and fear, thus underscoring the apparent necessity for prison's very existence.

Echoing the presence of violence in the sample discussed above, the othering of the inmate population occurs both explicitly and implicitly, and again, early in the exposition of the prison. This occurs in voice-over in Sleepers accompanying a panning shot of the exercise yard:

It was not a group of innocent boys at Wilkinson. Most, if not all, the inmates belonged there, and a number of them were riding out their second and third convictions. All were violent offenders. Few seemed sorry for what they had done. And as for rehabilitation - forget it.

In Tomorrow La Scala, prison officer Kevin stands in front of a metal door and addresses the theatre group who are visiting:

We're going to meet the lifers. These are an entirely different breed to the rest of the prison population. They're in here an average of 12 years, some as long as 20 years and all have committed pretty serious crimes. Point of paramount importance - no fraternising, be friendly but don't be their friend.

There are frequent references to, and reduction of the prison populations to "rapists", "murderers", "animals" and so on. Visually, there is an emphasis on physical form, strength and the potential for violence with inmates regularly depicted with shaved heads in tight vests, tattooed, pushing weights (Animal Factory, Down Time, Slam, Prison Song, Undisputed, American History X and A Letter From Death Row). These often wide, panning shots establish the prison population as an homogenous other. This is complemented by individual, superficial cameos of psychotic monsters, who are defined by the brutality of their crimes, such as The Monk in Mean Machine, Sullivan in Just Cause and John Toombes in Lucky Break. Con Air (dir. Simon West, 1997) offers a pertinent example of all of these elements. The protagonist, Cameron Poe, a highly decorated soldier who, having been convicted of manslaughter after protecting his wife in a fight, is put on a transport plane home with an array of long term inmates being transferred to a maximum security prison. In a scene lasting more than nine minutes, each inmate is shown in slow motion as they are escorted onto the plane accompanied by two helicopters and a phalanx of ten armed guards. For each one, the scene cuts to a CCTV screen with computer graphics detailing their crimes, sentence and life history, this is complemented by an explanation:

US Marshall Larkin: 'This one's done it all - kidnapping, robbery, murder, extortion"

Cut to overhead shot of guards. Cut to close up of bus door opening, cut to close up from ground upwards of Cyrus with helicopter in background.

US Marshall Larkin: 'His name is Cyrus Grissom, aka Cyrus The Virus - 39 years old, 25 of them spent in our institutions'

Cut to close up of his feet with chains in slow motion at ground level

US Marshall Larkin: 'But he bettered himself inside - earned two degrees including his Juris Doctorate. He also killed 11 fellow inmates, incited three riots and escaped twice. Likes to brag that he killed more men than cancer. Cyrus is a poster child for the criminally insane. He is a product of the system.'

This last comment, of prison being to blame for the dehumanising process, does offer an alternative reading of the construction of inmates in the discourse. It could be suggested that the portrayal of the prison population in the sample represents precisely the barbaric nature of prison, and thus this depiction of inmates offers a challenge to the existence of the penal estate. However, for such a discourse to exist, one would need to witness the progression of dehumanization, the mechanistic process of imprisonment which turns a free wo/man into a monster (Mason 2003; 2006b). This counter discourse, a reappropriation of meaning (Hall 1997) does occur in Animal Factory. As the name suggests, the film, written by an ex-inmate is concerned with this very process. New inmate Ron Decker is portrayed as increasingly corrupted by prison drawn into the violence and power structure between inmates, until he eventually escapes. Even if one accepts that the backdrop of superficial characterisation and othering of the prison population is used to reinforce Ron's demise - that all inmates have become like they are because of the system - this counter-strategy is conspicuous by its absence the rest of the sample.
 
The othering of inmates, through fixing them to their crimes, appearance and difference to the prison hero/ine leads to the construction of a pro-prison discourse. With a prison population constructed as predominantly highly dangerous, morally bereft and beyond redemption, the prison becomes the only institution capable of offering a solution. Further, the representation of the heroic, often innocent inmate appears to offer the possibility of a reformist or abolitionist discourse, but like the depiction of violence, this opportunity is used for the reverse. That process is also present in the final element of the discourse I wish to discuss, the support for the death penalty.
 
SUPPORTING THE DEATH PENALTY

The sample analysed contained six films set on death row and although space precludes any detailed exploration of this element of the discourse, I want to offer some brief points about the representation of execution in these films and how this too is located within a discourse of imprisonment which ultimately supports the institutions of prison and the death penalty. Further, that the discourse here is similarly double-edged to that concerning violence and the representation of inmates. Namely, that while it posits abolition of state killing, its construction of meaning centres around the justification of it.

The discourse analysis of these particular films supports Sarat's argument, that despite the attempt to demonstrate that the death penalty is wrong, the discourse in these films is not one of abolition, nor does it challenge its rationale within the criminal justice system (Sarat 2002). This occurs in two ways in these films. The first is to limit the exploration of the use of the death penalty to whether or not the protagonist is deserving of it. This is explored either through a did-they-didn't-they commit the crime (The Chamber, Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, The Life of David Gale) or an examination of what Sarat calls 'the calculus of desert (sic)' (Sarat 2002: 213), namely whether the death penalty is the appropriate penalty for the crime committed (Last Dance, A Letter From Death Row). Thus, what appears to be a discursive challenge to state killing, through a sympathetic portrayal of the condemned, is fundamentally a narrow representation which avoids broader questions about the use of executions in contemporary societies. Furthermore, the death penalty is used in the majority of these films to enable the redemption of the protagonist: John Coffey's messianic sacrifice in The Green Mile; David Gale's death to prove the fallibility of the justice system in The Life of David Gale; the redemption of Matthew Poncelet, Sam Cayhall and Arlen Bitterbuck in Dead Man Walking, The Chamber and The Green Mile, respectively.

Secondly, and in contrast with the incessant violence of the other prison films, the executions are fixed at a denotative level. Thus the scenes immediately before the moment of death are concerned with process, administration and system. In echoing Sarat's memorable phrase, 'fetishizing the technology of death' (Sarat 2002: 237), straps, buckles and probes are attached, death warrants are read out and switches are flicked. The stark white rooms in The Chamber, Dead Man Walking, Last Dance and The Life of David Gale communicate the sterile, clinical nature of state executions. The absence of the horror of an execution is replaced by ritual, procedure and bureaucracy which once again, locates the discourse of the death penalty within a framework of legitimacy and necessity.

Discussion

I began by discussing the increased use of prison as a penal sanction in the UK and how many have seen the punitive turn in criminal justice in recent years as a populist measure. Mathiesen is right to highlight the important role the media plays in this process and it is surprising that so little analysis has been undertaken given the invisibility of prison, the consequent reliance on the media for information about it (Levenson 2001; Mason 2003) and the complex meshing between political and media culture and in particular crime and punishment. The US presidential election defeat of Michael Dukakis to George Bush in 1988, for example, has consistently been linked to the case of William Horton, an inmate serving life imprisonment for murder in Massachusetts, where Dukakis was State Governor (Estrich 1998; Jamieson 1992; Loader 2005; Newburn and Jones 2005). Horton was released for a weekend visit during which he stabbed a man and raped the man's girlfriend. Bush's campaign team launched a negative television campaign against Dukakis in two adverts. The first, contrasting Dukakis' support for the furloughing of inmates with Bush's support for the death penalty; the other suggesting that Dukakis offered a revolving door prison policy, fuelling public fears about crime and their perception of a liberal prison policy.

In the last two British elections, the Conservatives ran similar campaigns. In 2001, their election broadcast portrayed inmates being let out of jail early and committing crimes and suggested this had led to at least two rapes (BBC Online, 15th May 2001) and in 2005 they ran a poster campaign with the slogan 'How would you feel if a bloke on early release attacked your daughter? Are you thinking what we're thinking?' (Mason 2006a).

The discourse analysis of prison films over the last ten years reveals several discursive practices which bolster the support for prison, and arguably its increased use. The graphic and frequent violence and sexual assaults depicted and/or spoken about serve to fix the meaning of imprisonment to such brutality. However, rather than providing a condemnation of the penal system, the brutality remains scoptophilically represented, revelling in the stabbings, rapes and beatings between, and of, inmates. Inmate violence is part of a representational practice which constructs the prison population as inhuman other. Where the inmate hero/ine is depicted sympathetically through their innocence or harsh treatment, this is played out against a backdrop of a prison populated by psychotic, violent and brutal inmates. Such a construction contributes to a cinematic discourse representing prison as the only effective means of incapacitation and punishment. Finally and similarly, films which appear to offer a challenge to the death penalty side step the abolitionist argument and choose instead to concentration upon the suitability of the punishment and its technological aspects, framed within a discourse of bureaucracy.

While this analysis does not attempt to draw any firm conclusions about how such a cinematic discourse of prison may directly impact upon public opinion, it suggests that cultural constructions of prison are an important component of in populist punitiveness of current criminal justice policy. Prison films, as discursive practices, continue to bolster the existence of the prison industrial complex and remain silent on questions of reform and/or abolition of prison. Meanwhile, administrations such as those in the UK and the US remain wedded to an unjust, cruel, inefficient and dysfunctional penal system and consider punitiveness useful political capital.

References

Blair, T. (1993) 'Why Crime Is A Socialist Issue ', New Statesman & Society 29: 27-28.

Christie, N. (2000) Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style? London: Routledge.

Dyer, J. (2000) The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime, Boulder, Cl.: Westview Press.

Estrich, S. (1998) Getting Away With Murder: How Politics is Destroying the Criminal Justice System. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press.

Garland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Greer, C., & Jewkes, Y. (2005) 'Extremes of Otherness: Media Images of Social Exclusion ', Social Justice 32: 20-31.

Hall, S. (1997) 'The Spectacle of the Other', in S. Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

Hutton, N. (2005) 'Beyond Populist Punitiveness?' Punishment and Society 7: 243-258.

Jacobson, M. (2005) Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration. New York: New York University Press.

Jamieson, K. H. (1992) Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jarvis, B. (2006) 'The Violence of Images: Inside the Prison TV Drama Oz', in P. Mason (ed.), Captured By The Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

Johnstone, G. (2000) 'Penal Policy Making: Elitist, Populist or Participatory', Punishment and Society 2: 161-180.

Levenson, J. (2001) 'Inside Information: Prisons and the Media', Criminal Justice Matters: 14-15.

Loader, I. (2005) 'The Affects of Punishment: Emotions, Democracy and Penal Politics', Criminal Justice Matters 60: 12-13.

Mason, P. (2003) 'The Screen Machine: Cinematic Representations of Prisons', in P. Mason (ed.), Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

- (2006a) 'Turn On, Tune In, Slop Out', in P. Mason (ed.), Captured By The Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

- (2006b) 'Hollywood's Prison Film: Towards a Discursive Regime of Imprisonment', in T. Serassis, H. Kania & H.-J. Albrecht (eds.), Images of Crime III: Representations of Crime in Politics, Society, Science, the Arts and the Media. Freiburg: Max Planck Institute.

Mathiesen, T. (2000) Prisons on Trial. Winchester: Waterside Press.

- (2001) 'Television, Public Space and Prison Population: A Commentary on Mauer and Simon', Punishment and Society 3: 35-42.

- (2003) Contemporary Penal Policy - A Study in Moral Panics, European Committee on Crime Problems: 22nd Criminological Research Conference. Strasbourg.

Newburn, T., & Jones, T. (2005) 'Symbolic Politics and Penal Populism: The Long Shadow of Willie Horton', Crime Media Culture 1: 72-87.

Parenti, C. (1999) Lockdown America and the Rise of America's Prison Population. New York: Verso.

Pratt, J. (2000) 'Emotive and Ostentatious Punishment: Its Decline and Resurgence in Modern Society', Punishment and Society 2: 417-439.

Roberts, J., Stalans, L., Indermaur, D., & Hough, M. (2002) Penal Populism and Public Opinion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ryan, M. (2006) 'Red Tops, Populists and the Irresistible Rise of the Public Voice', in P. Mason (ed.), Captured By The Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

Sarat, A. (2002) When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Prison Reform Trust. (2005) Bromley Briefings: Prison Factfile, October 2005 London: Prison Reform Trust

Wacquant, L. (2005) 'The Great Penal Leap Backward: Incarceration in America From Nixon to Clinton', in J. Pratt, D. Brown, M. Brown, S. Hallsworth & W. Morrison (eds.), The New Punitiveness: Trends, Theories and Perspectives. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

- (2006) Deadly Symbiosis: The Rise of Neoliberal Penalty. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Notes

1. The one exception in the sample was The Green Mile (dir. Frank Darabont, 1999) in which the central character is Paul Edgecomb, a head prison guard on death row.

2. There is a graphic death in The Green Mile, where a deliberately botched procedure leads to the condemned Eduard Delacroix burning to death in the electric chair. However, Sarat has suggested that this merely suggests that 'there is nothing that decent people should find offensive or gruesome about a "normal" execution' (Sarat 2002: 239).
 

Film List

Just Cause (1995, dir. Arne Glimcher)

Murder in the First (1995, dir. Marc Rocco)

Under Lock And Key (1995, dir. Henri Charr)

The Chamber (1996, dir. James Foley)

Dead Man Walking (1996, dir. Tim Robbins)

Last Dance (1996, dir. Bruce Beresford)

Sleepers (1996, dir. Barry Levinson)

Con Air (1997, dir. Simon West)

American History X (1998, dir. Tony Kaye)

A Letter From Death Row (1998, dir. Marvin Baker & Bret Michaels)

Slam (1998, Marc Levin)

Brokedown Palace (1999, dir. Jonathan Kaplan)

Fortress 2 (1999, Geoff Murphy)

The Green Mile (1999 , dir. Frank Darabont)

The Hurricane (1999, dir. Norman Jewison)

Life (1999, dir. Ted Demme)

A Map of the World (1999, dir. Scott Elliott)

Animal Factory (2000, dir. Steve Buscemi)

Down Time (2001, dir. Sean Wilson)

Lucky Break (2001, dir. Peter Cattaneo)

Mean Machine (2001, dir. Barry Skolnick)

Prison Song (2001, dir. Darnell Martin)

The 25th Hour (2002, dir. Spike Lee)

Chicago (2002, dir. Rob Marshall)

Tomorrow La Scala! (2002, dir. Francesca Joseph)

Undisputed (2002, Walter Hill)

The Life of David Gale (2003, dir. Alan Parker)

The Longest Yard (2005, dir. Peter Segal)