it is easy for one to get absorbed in the banality of prison exposes, whether on print or paper, however the documentary I happened upon for this assignment reconstructs the banal idea of a prison expose from the prisoners’ perspective. The documentary is set in Angola Prison in Louisiana. A prison best known for the fact that 85 present of the inmates who see the inside of these bars will never again experience life outside of the prison. This documentary, titled The Farm, Angola, USA, follows six prisoners hoping to beat the odds and walk free from Angola. Of those six prisoners, three are serving life sentences, one is facing the death penalty, and two have a sentence north of fifty years. This film hopes to show the prisoners not as prisoners …show more content…
Williams is serving one hundred years at Angola and is twenty-five years into his sentence when the movie begins. He is eligible for parole and sees this as another chance to fight for his innocence, for which there is a valid case to be made. When the parole board commences, it begins with a new testimony from the victim, who pleads the parole board not to allow her rapist out under any conditions. The parole board is very “sympathetic” to her and provides her with reassuring words before Williams even comes in. Williams comes in with hundreds of pages of evidence, albeit circumstantial, and begins to argue his case, but the board is incredibly dismissive of him. They deny his parole swiftly and tell him to take his evidence to the courts if he wants to argue his innocence. Once the doors shut for the last time and Williams has left, the board admits to not even taking his evidence into account, as they believe if they were in jail that long they would have come up with something too. Williams is allowed to fully present his evidence to the camera, however, and he makes a strong case, citing poor handling by the police and justice departments and racist beliefs held by the victims of this
Neither Conover nor Santos paints a favorable picture of conditions within prison. In particular, Santos description of violence within prison shows a very disturbing setting for people to live. Santos describes a daily fight to remain safe and alive. ...
In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing journalist Ted Conover, who has a background in anthropology, goes undercover as correctional officer in order to examine the US prison system. The central problem to this analysis is that is inherently subjective because the author is documenting his experience from the lens of the guard. In such a polarizing and negative power dynamic a singular perspective shows a severely inadequate representation of what occurs at the institution and the circumstances that allow it to perpetuate. This failure is evident in the author’s personal transformation from the beginning of the book to the end. His writing becomes desensitized and begins to see prisoners as increasingly evil. Although this type of first hand journalism is admirable and provides interesting anecdotal evidence it will never be able to fully examine the precise and intricate social, economic, and political conditions that are the root cause of the injustice that is our criminal justice system.
Relations during this time with the prison and the outside world are discussed, as well as how these relations dominated life inside of a prison and developed new challenges within the prison. After Ragen left, Frank Pate become his successors. Pate faced a problem because he neither sought nor exercised the charismatic authority of Ragen. The Prison remained an imperatively coordinated paramilitary organization, which still required its warden to personify its goals and values. Jacobs goes on to discusses how what Pate did, was not the same direction or ideas that Ragen was doing or had. Jacobs’s counties this discussion with the challenges and issues that prison had during the time of 1961 through 1970. Jacobs blames that the loss of a warden who could command absolute authority, the loss of local autonomy, it heightened race problems among blacks, and the penetration of legal norms exposed severe strains in the authrotitarian system, and says pate cant control
All in all, Kerman’s year sentence in jail opened her eyes to some of the many problems within the federal prison system. She witnessed favoritism, abuse, health violations, etc. that helped her realize that she never wanted to go back to prison, despite all the true friendships she made. Through her use of rhetoric, mainly ethos, Kerman showed her audience a firsthand account of what an actual prison sentence is like. She also explored the idea of how one bad decision can change a person’s life forever.
Although prisons have the primary objective of rehabilitation, prisoners will likely go through many other troubling emotions before reaching a point of reformation. Being ostracized from society, it is not uncommon to experience despair, depression, and hopelessness. Be that as it may, through reading various prison writings, it can be seen that inmates can find hope in the smallest things. As represented in “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane”, the author, Etheridge Knight, as well as other black inmates look up to Hard Rock, an inmate who is all but dutiful in a world where white people are placed at the top of the totem pole. However, after Hard Rock goes through a lobotomy-esque procedure, the motif
In addition, the jury fails to recognize the disabilities and special circumstances that would prohibit some of the men from being physically able to commit the crime because of their racial prejudice. As the documentary explains, “Two of them are 13 years old at the time the incident took place. One of them was blind. One of them had syphilis and simply couldn’t have had sexual intercourse” (Scottsboro Boys: An American Tragedy). Even as the defense presents these indisputable facts, the jury fails to look past their racial bias of protecting white women to see the disabilities that prove the innocence of the four men. They remain locked away in jail for over six years, until the fourth trial where the court of Alabama recognizes the prejudice-filled verdict and real change occurs, as the new innocent verdict brings justice to the four Scottsboro boys’. The jury reviews the disabilities and acknowledges the undeniable fact that they are not physically capable of rape. As for the other five defendants remaining in custody, the jury cannot look past the color of their skin, even as the defense mentions the abnormality of half of the defendants being guilty and half
This essay will be looking into the ways that the documentary form and narrative cinema have impacted and influenced each other. The documentary text chosen, Louis Theroux: Behind Bars (2008) depicts the life of prison inmates within America’s infamous San Quentin State Prison. Theroux speaks to serial murderers, gang members, at-risk inmates and guards whilst questioning their sentence alongside their feelings about life within prison. Similarly, the narrative text chosen Carandiru (2003) looks into the life of fictional inmates within the Brazilian Carandiru Penitentiary, a factual prison with its climax based on the 1992 police attack. The film has a strong emphasis on poverty and the realities of underdevelopment, taking influence from
The authors begin the book by providing advice on how a convict can prepare for release from prison. Throughout the book, the authors utilize two fictional characters, Joe and Jill Convict, as examples of prisoners reentering society. These fictional characters are representative of America’s prisoners. Prison is an artificial world with a very different social system than the real world beyond bars. Convicts follow the same daily schedule and are shaped by the different society that is prison. Prisoners therefore forget many of the obl...
The 1970s in the United States was a time of incredible change, doubt, as well as reform. The many issues happening throughout the country helped to lead to the discomfort in many prisoners that eventually lead to their e...
Knowing and understanding the author’s purpose, we see where he is coming from and what his “point of view” is. We see that the author is someone that does not agree with the activities that occur in the native prison. It makes the author feel uncomfortable with the establishment and its procedures.
prisoners, the audience shares in the daily life of the condemned before the massacre perpetrated on
In the media, prisons have always been depicted as a horrible place. The film, The Shawshank Redemption, is a prime example that supports the media 's suggestions about prison life. In the film we are familiarized with Andy Dufresne, who is a banker that is wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. While trying to both remain discreet and find his prison identity, he assists Ellis Boyd 'Red ' Redding, a peddler, and Brooks Hatlen. In his attempt to fit into the rough prison subculture, Andy strategically starts a business relationship with the captain Captain Bryon Hadley and Samuel Norton. The film gives an insider 's look at various aspects of prison life. These aspects include prison culture; explicitly, guard subculture and inmate subculture.
The mass media uses prison life as the source for movies and television shows. Over the years there have been many movies written about prison but the most prominent in my mind is Frank Darabont’s, The Shawshank Redemption. Throughout the film there are many examples of the falsities of prison life. There are some elements of truth but they are out weighed by the misconceptions. Numerous prisoners are allowed to walk around the prison and the prison yard with no guards in sight. In actuality there are always guards around, especially on the inside. The prisoner’s movement through the prison is highly restricted.
2nd ed. of the book. USA: Penguin Books, Ltd. [Accessed 01 January 2014]. The Prison Reform Trust.
Angola is a country located in Southern Africa that was plagued by civil war for decades. Over the many decades it has been estimated that four million Angolans were displaced having to leave their homes for to seek a safe environment. In 2012 these Angolan refugees, some of whom have been living abroad for decades, have lost their status as refugees in their host countries as a result of the improving conditions at home. However since the cessation of civil unrest the number of refugees and internally displaced Angolan persons has slowly been on the rise. Despite all of the improvements that have been made there still exists a very widespread poverty. Angola has been injured and scarred from the more than four decades of