Prisoners on Prison Films

Media representation plays a significant role in shaping how the public understand the penal system. It is less understood how people serving sentences in prison respond to media representations. This book draws upon an exploratory study in which five contemporary British prison films were screened to an audience of men serving long sentences deep inside the English prison system. Audience studies of prisons and the media have largely focussed at a macro-level, considering how this shapes public attitudes and values, and situating this within the broader political economy. By focussing on people in prison, this study also seeks to explore the role of the media at a micro-level, intersecting with individual identity and sense of self. Further, the study is concerned with the role of media consumption at a meso-level, including the interplay with institutional cultures, such as the inmate culture. The research adopted an audience ethnography approach, qualitative in nature and recognising audiencehood as an active process in which viewers engage in struggles over meaning rather than passively consuming media texts. The essential concern is the relationship between prison film and the lived experience of the participants.

Screwed centres on Sam Norwood, a new prison officer. He learns his craft, guided by more experienced colleagues, and becomes enmeshed in the culture, turning to colleagues for social connection and emotional support, becoming more detached from his wife and young child. Slowly, Norwood comes to realise that his closest colleagues are corrupt and are running an organised drugs ring from within the prison. The prisoner audience appreciated viewing a film that focussed on prison staff, particularly as it was not an idealised fantasy, but instead showed brutal, corrupt and harmful behaviours. Many of the men felt that this exposed real issues and validated their complaints. There were three significant themes discussed by the group. The first was prison officer culture and how this shaped the outlook and behaviour of prison staff. The second addressed corruption in prison, not only official misconduct, but also a more general critique of the perceived illegitimacy of penal authority. Finally, there was discussion of the harmfulness of prison work for those undertaking it, and the emotional response of prisoners to the experience of suffering by prison staff. Screwed elicited a powerful response from the audience, generating an intellectual critique of prisons and provoking uncomfortable, feelings about prison staff.

Everyday focusses on a family, with four children, over a five-year period during which the father, Ian Ferguson, serves a prison sentence while the mother, Karen, struggles to maintain the family at home. Three main themes emerged from the discussions. The first centred on the experiences of people serving long-term sentences, who suffered the pain of separation, where relationships could be dissolved, compromised and damaged. The second theme addressed the experience of family members. In particular, emotional strain, financial hardship and social stigma. The resilience and loyalty of loved ones were positively represented in the film and highly regarded by the audience. Finally, the audience responded to the film’s depiction of a family reunited after release. Many of the audience members were sustained by a hope that they too would be reconciled with their loved ones. They were nevertheless aware that such dreams could be illusory and that the reality of release could be difficult and uncertain. Everyday offered a means to reflect upon the painful effects of imprisonment for prisoners and their families. It was also a gateway into exploration of the emotional life of prisons.

This chapter draws together the main findings from an exploratory study in which five contemporary British prison films were screened to an audience of men serving long sentences in an English prison. At a macro-level, mediated images are a power resource that project ideological visions of justice. The audience recognised that representation was part of the power structures that enabled punitiveness. Although they applauded examples of alternative, critical perspectives they saw this is having limited impact in the face of hegemonic power. From the meso-level, the participants used these films to map the social terrain of prisons. The dominant representations conveyed a hegemonic ideal of what it is to be a prisoner. This was a form of symbolic violence that had implications for how people in prison are viewed by others but also how they construct their own lives. At the micro-level, media was deployed by the audience members as part of the ongoing process of constructing their self-identity. The chapter ends by considering the implications for research and practice. This includes the potential to use media productively, for example through film discussion groups and by engaging prisoners in media production. It is argued that as digital developments are rolled out in prisons, the end-user, prisoners themselves, should have an important role in design, content production and use.