Prisons have long been a deep source of fascination for the public and the media. Whether in news, literature, social media, film or television, crime and punishment are a persistent and vivid presence, generating competing visions of what prisons are for, how they operate and who inhabits them. In reality, most people have no direct experience of imprisonment. Although England and Wales are high users of imprisonment by Western European standards, the rate of imprisonment is around 174 people per 100,000 of the population (Sturge 2019), so less than 0.2% of the population are imprisoned at any time. Exposure to imprisonment for most people is not through personal experience but instead through representation in the media. What is less well understood is the significance of media representation of prisons to people in prisons.
This book explores the significance of media representation, specifically through dramatic films, not for the public, but for prisoners themselves. It is the first substantial empirical examination of the contemporary relationship between cinema representation and the lived reality of prison. The research project reported in this book involved screening recent British prison films (i.e. films wholly or mainly set in a prison or take imprisonment and its consequences as a primary theme) to an audience of men serving long sentences deep inside the English prison system. The study is concerned with how the context of imprisonment shapes media consumption. The audience discussion, interpretation and insights into the films, their lives and the relationship between representation and reality were profound and revealing. Films have been chosen as the medium partly because of our personal interest, but also because films retain a particular significance in the media landscape. Dawn Cecil (2015) has argued that the importance of prison films has declined to the extent that: âFor the most part, these films have become relics of the pastâ (p. 47), but this book will illustrate that such an assessment is too gloomy. Although none of the films in this study were major commercial successes, largely being independent productions, they have generally attracted critical attention and been broadcast on television, made available on streaming services, as well as having been screened in cinemas. The persistence of prison film production suggests that there remains a viable market and consumer interest. Films also remain an important source of information about imprisonment, its practice and values. Although much media production and consumption today is instantaneous, prison films are often viewed in a more considered way with greater attention and for a more substantial running time; they have a prestige that means they carry weight and credibility with viewers; they also have a wide geographical reach, and; they remain in circulation for a longer period than other media forms. Films do not, therefore, entirely conform to the model of disposable consumption and retain a significance with viewers and in relation to wider society.
The audience in this studyâmen serving long sentences in an English prisonâare people who are deserving of a voice, and whose experiences merit public attention, particularly as sentence lengths are increasing and more people are receiving indefinite or life sentences (Crewe et al. 2019). This study also specifically addresses a significant gap in the current burgeoning academic scrutiny being directed to the relationship between media representation and criminal justice realities. To date, academic study has largely been directed to the relationship between the media, political culture and public attitudes. This has often highlighted that media representation is inaccurate and distorts public perceptions, and that the voices of people in prison are excluded from the media (Foss 2018). This study seeks to close these gaps by exploring the relationship between media representation and people in prison, in other words the very subjects of that representation. They are the people who can bring particular expertise to decoding and making meaning of media representation; they are the people who are least heard directly and in an unmediated way, and; they are the people most affected by the consequences of representation. This study is therefore concerned with understanding and confronting media, power and inequality. The study, however, gives attention not only to the wider political economy, but also to the penal realities to which those people in prison are subjected. In this way, the study offers a bridge between detailed ethnographic research that reveals the everyday processes and experiences of prison life, and media studies with its focus on media products, their significance and effects.
This opening chapter will set out some of the ways in which prison films have been analysed previously and explain how this study expands and builds upon these foundations. The methodology will also be described, setting out how the research was conducted. The aim throughout this book is to encourage curiosity, questioning and critical examination of the practice of imprisonment and the significance of the media in contemporary society.
Historical Readings of Prison Films
There have been attempts to connect film representation to shifting penal ideologies. Such analysis is based upon an assumption of a symbiotic relationship between film and society.
In America, Cheatwood (1998) has argued that prison films: âdisplay a responsiveness to the realities of theory, practice and public perceptions and interests, a responsiveness clearly visible in the characteristics of the central figures and structural conditions within the filmsâ (p. 215). He continued to say that: ââŚprison films tell us a great deal about the nature of our society, our prisons, and our theorization about prisons at any point in timeâ (p. 227). He, further, asserted that: âMovies represent the broad feeling of the era and put into laymanâs language those ideas that scholars are attempting to formulate and practitioners are attempting to carry outâ (p. 227). On this basis, Cheatwood set out a historical and cultural journey of the prison film genre. This started with the morality plays of the 1930s Depression era, through rehabilitation orientation in the 1940s and 1950s, to emphasis on the dynamics of power and confinement during the Sixties and Seventies, to a modern depiction that was more diverse and ambiguous about the role, function and operation of prisons.
Similarly in the UK, Wilson and OâSullivan (2004) have suggested that films are coded with the values of the period in which they are produced and: ââŚact as a kind of social barometer, registering the concerns of their era and may have played a role in disseminating ideas and understandings about the state of penal institutions and where they might be headingâ (p. 55). Such taxonomies have been criticised by Paul Mason (2006) as oversimplified, and instead he argued that genre conventions (the commonly represented aspects of imprisonment, storylines, characters and scenarios) offer a discursive practice that produces knowledge and meaning at a particular time, but this itself is contested and the meaning changes in different contexts and at different times. We see merits in both arguments. Films and other media texts clearly have coded within them values that reflect the broader social context in which they are produced. It is, however, also right to recognise that those values are contested so that different films may conflict in the way they envision imprisonment, that different viewers read those texts in different ways, and that such readings are open to reassessment over time. Films are a broad but imperfect indication of dominant penal values, but their meaning is dynamic and deeply contested, as is the meaning of punishment, prisons and justice in society.
In setting the context for this study, it worth considering a brief history of British prison films and their context. Staring in the 1930s, popular comedian Will Hay enjoyed success with Convict 99 (dir. Marcel Varnel 1938), in which Hay is mistakenly appointed as a prison governor and in his own benignly incompetent way ameliorates the most punitive aspects of the prison and creates a more humane and collegiate institution. This was produced at a time when prison populations had been consistently falling for over two decades and there was support for more therapeutic approaches to prison management (Shuker 2010), but concern was rising regarding prison conditions and the influence of serious organised crime, particularly following the mutiny at Dartmoor prison in 1932 (Brown 2013). The film at least in part, through the different management regimes depicted, echoes some of the debates about the role and function of prisons. In the post-war years, there was a progressive reconstruction of society through the creation of the welfare state. The Criminal Justice Act of 1948 abolished hard labour and most corporal punishment, while also promoting more rehabilitative approaches in youth custody and adult prisons. The ambitions of such reforms were reflected in films including Boys in Brown (dir. Montgomery Tully 1949) in which borstal detention leads to the moral redemption of a young prisoner.
In the 60s a more realistic and critical edge emerged, with films such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (dir. Tony Richardson 1962) in which Colin Smith played by Tom Courtney resists the paternal authority of the welfarist borstal and the wider class structure it reinforces, and in The Hill (dir. Sidney Lumet 1965), Sean Connery battles the morally corrupt, brutal military prison. In addition, attention was turned towards the impact of imprisonment on the partners and children left behind in Poor Cow (dir. Ken Loach 1967), exposing the social stigma, as well as the emotional and economic strain they experience. These films not only reflect criticisms of prisons but also wider society in which a new generation led calls for liberalisation and the redrawing of social hierarchies, posing a set of challenges that spilled into bitterly contested street protests and culture conflicts. The 1960s was also a period in which the English and Welsh prison population was growing and high profile crimes including the notorious Great Train Robbery of 1963, and the subsequent escape of one of the robbers, Ronnie Biggs, in 1965 gave rise to concerns about the capacity of the criminal justice system to deal with the development of organised crime. A review of the prison system by Lord Mountbatten (1966) led to the creation of a security classification system and specialist prisons for t...