Prisons are secret, hidden worlds that are largely unknown to the public. A number of surveys carried out in the UK have shown not only that the majority of the public don't know how many people are in prison, but the can't even fathom a guess as to how many are locked up on their behalf (1). For many people, the closest they will get to prisons is through their depiction on TV and in films (2). Despite the questionable accuracy and reliability of these representations, they set the public agenda for understanding prisons:

"[T]hat people use knowledge they obtain from the media to construct a picture of the world, an image of reality on which they base their actions. This process, sometimes called "the social construction of reality", is particularly important in the realm of crime, justice, and the media" (3)

Although there have been several hundred prison films made (4), they have not generally improved public understanding or stimulated reform indeed, these films may have blocked and prevented this (5). One prison reformer, disillusioned by these representations stated that in respect of the effort put into producing prison films, "one might be tempted to wonder if it had all been worth it" (6)

However, John Hillcoat's Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (Aus 1988) defies this trend and really is worth the effort. The film is "based on actual events that have occurred in prisons in America and Australia" and although it has the trappings of the genre, including acts of extreme violence, sex and staff brutality (7), it presents a much broader and powerful indictment of penal trends in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Although the high water mark of these approaches has passed, they continue to influence today's prison system and the film retains its shocking relevance.

The late 1980's saw the rise of prison privatisation and growing prison populations in most western democracies. These developments were linked to the hegemony of right-wing, free-marketeers with their love of the private sector and hate of marginal groups. This era spawned the philosophy of punishment known as just deserts (8). This philosophy saw punishment in rational economic terms, as though there was some appropriate quantity of punishment that reflected the condemnation of a particular act. This rationality was also linked to the penal philosophy of humane containment, that prisoners should not be rehabilitated, deterred or forced to suffer, but merely contained for the appropriate quantity of time. These policies formed the basis of the sentencing reforms of the early 1990's in many countries, including the UK and shaped Michael Howard's 'austere but decent' ideas of imprisonment. This conservative ideology and these cold, rational, economic approaches form the ideological backdrop to the film. A distant, pre-recorded voice introduces new prisoners and the viewer to the prison:

"Welcome to Central Industrial part of Correctional Services rapidly expanding network of new generation facilities, dedicated to the goal of humane containment - We are the future of containment."

Control & Order

The film opens with an explanatory title, setting out what has happened in the prison:

"Central Industrial prison is a 'new generation' maximum security facility designed to house the prison system's most violent, unmanageable and predatory prisoners.

For the past 37 months Central Industrial has been operating in a state of "lockdown" whereby all inmates remain confined to their cells. This is the longest lockdown in the history of the Bureau of Prisons.

Conflicting claims concerning the events that brought about the October 25 'lockdown' led the Committee on the Judiciary to commission a report on its causes…"

This opening eschews the normal melodrama of a daring escape or a bloody riot, instead telling us right at the beginning that the ultimate result is an anti-climactic lock down. By taking away the usual money-shot of prison films, the viewer is forced to focus on the events as they unfold. What are the circumstances and context that have led to this situation? What is the process that leads to this state of affairs?

The film follows the structure of the Committee's report, starting at the beginning of the year, when the number of recorded incidents starts to rise. The prison is shown to be lax in its operation, with prisoners having easy access to drugs and other contraband. The staff sit in central control pods rather than mixing with the prisoners, the high technology - low staffing environment contributing towards the poor control.

The prison authorities start to respond, firstly by carrying out special operations searches to flush out the contraband. Further incidents lead to more stringent restrictions, including the removal of personal property, the removal of televisions and the ending of outdoor exercise and the restriction of prisoners to their residential units. Far from reducing tensions and improving order, these moves are seen as increasingly arbitrary and unfair:

"Why they turning the TV's off? They could say what they liked about contraband and weapons and drugs because officially you weren't supposed to have stuff like that. TV's though? You don't turn somebody's TV off when he's stuck in his cell all day. You're asking for something to happen when you come with stuff like that."

Senior prison managers fail to respond to the situation. We see one senior manager who wanders around the administrative segregation unit commenting on the tiniest detail of physical security but ignores the prisoner who is exercising in the indoor cage. Despite the prisoner's protests and an officer's violent response (he hits the cage with his baton), the manager continues to ignore him.

The staff also pay the price as the situation degenerates. When one officer, Yale, attempts to convince the management of the folly of their approach and to highlight the tensions in the prison, he finds himself suspended. He attempts to protest to but is denied access to senior managers and is only able to communicate with a secretary through an intercom. The stress causes one officer to break down whilst on duty in the administrative segregation unit; "You're not supposed to get killed just doing your job". He later commits suicide.

The film depicts a poorly controlled prison, where inadequate and insensitive attempts to assert control merely inflame the situation. As well as bringing the prison to the lockdown paralysis, this ultimately has tragic consequences for those who both live and work in the prison.

The Media

As well as looking inside the prison, the film examines the social context. As has been mentioned, the media is a major a major shaper of public opinion despite the fact that in its presentation of prisons is often superficial, biased or inaccurate.

We are shown one news report that describes the events that led to the lock down at the prison:

"The Central Industrial Building is now on 24 hour a day lock down. Administrators were forced to instigate the lock down because of the latest wave in a flood of violence that has plagued the institution for years. This past year, twenty five hundred incidents of violence have been recorded. In the past five weeks alone there have been five deaths. Today's incidents culminated when within hours of each other, two bodies were removed from the prison. Early this morning inmate Grezner was found dead in his cell. Grezner was facing four life sentences for murder hanged himself during the night. Correctional Police Officer Dennis Anthony Posner was attacked by an inmate and killed. He was stabbed more than fifty times in the chest and abdomen. Officer Posner who had been with the department for seven years had two commendations for bravery. He leaves a wife and three children. As for claims by prisoners that violence was triggered by ongoing harassment of inmates, prison administration sources dismissed the charges as 'nonsense'".

This scene plays against long shots of the external perimeter of the prison and stage-managed displays of weapons found in the prison. This report ignores critical facts that the viewer has been presented with such as the suspicious circumstances of Grezner's 'suicide', Posner's previous brutality and indeed the recent history of Central Industrial prison. Instead, we have virtually a straight run of an official press release; the correctional officer is glorified, the dead prisoner vilified and concerns about the institution curtly dismissed.

Not only is this scene a brilliant pastiche of a typical prison news story, it also contains some of the critical themes that pervade crime and prison reporting. Firstly, the reliance on official sources and their domination of the news agenda has been supported in research, particularly that of Professor Ericson et al. He found that official sources were the primary source of journalistic information, so much so that:

"Indeed, they were so dominant that it is reasonable to conclude that news is primarily a public conversation among journalists and government officials, with others left to make only occasional utterances and to eavesdrop." (9)

In the depiction of offenders and victims, the report illustrates the bifurcation described of media presentation described by Ray Surrette:

"Over the course of this century the character of this portrait has darkened. Media criminals have become more animalistic, irrational and predatory - as have media crime fighters - and media crimes more violent, random, senseless, and sensational. In parallel, media victims have become innocent. The differences portrayed between the general public and criminals has thus swollen." (10)

This scene manages to convey how the public are presented through the media with a particular image of prisons. The media both perpetrates and reinforces common distortions, impeding effective public awareness and scrutiny.

Politics & Ideology

In the 1970's, Martinson published his famous research into rehabilitative programmes for prisoners (11). The conclusion of that research has subsequently been known in short-hand as 'nothing works'. The decline in the rehabilitative ideal that this caused led to new ideologies about crime and punishment. These included the economic, rather than morally-based approaches such as just deserts.

The failure to engage in any positive work with the prisoners in this film means that there is no effective challenge to the pervading culture of violence and abuse. One prisoner highlights the long-term consequences of this failure:

"You know what you're doing in here? Do you? You are creating a lot of angry men is what you are doing and one day those men are going to go out there and that day the people out there are going to pay for what you are doing in here. You remember that…You remember…You remember…That day you are going to pay."

Increasing public concern about crime and the increasing involvement of the private sector mean that crime and punishment are fertile ground for political and economic interests. These interests often coexist and indeed the general policies adopted encourage a confluence of interests between the media, professionals, politicians and enterprise. This is described in the words of Glover, a murderer who was released only to kill again:

"I was trained to do what I did. 'Convicted Killer Does it Again' screaming in the headlines and I remember an advertisement for home security alarms and an article 'Police Demand More Power'. They bred me to create fear and I did just what I was supposed to do".

Nothing could more graphically illustrate Ray Surette's observations on how the media, politicians, professionals and economic interests combine to support the status quo:

"In the media, the public is paradoxically shown that the traditional criminal justice system is not effective and simultaneously that its improvement remains the best solution to crime. These messages translate into support for law-and-order policies and existing criminal justice agencies."

Glover goes on to describe how crime and fear of crime is used as a control measure in society:

"People are scared. They're scared of each other because of people like me. That's the way they want it because then it always stays the same. They keep control that way. Fucking idiots. Fucking fools. I was never free. Nobody's ever free. One man released so they can imprison the rest of the world".

These arguments are familiar to anyone who has read Noam Chomsky's work. In this, he describes how established self-interest subverts democracy by using the media, politics and social forces to control the population:

"You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them" (12)

The closing scene of the film follows Henry Wenzil, a young prisoner we saw enter the prison at the start of the film and become brutalised by the regime to the point where he murders a fellow prisoner. Following the lockdown, he is one of five prisoners released early. We follow him entering an underground station, rejoining the public and the community. He has become a more angry and violent man as a result of his experiences. Is he being released to kill again, to create fear? This final scene serves as a chilling and graphic reminder of the real costs of failure in prison policies for both individuals and the community.

Conclusion

Many classic prison films, such as Cool Hand Luke (US 1967 dir. Stuart Rosenberg), Scum (UK 1979 dir. Alan Clarke) and The Shawshank Redemption (US 1994 dir. Frank Darabont) see the source of prison disorder as purely down to how prisoners are treated; it is an internal issue. The implication is that the answer comes not from changing our approach to punishment but merely in improving the professionalism of prison staff. In this sense they are inherently conservative. However, Ghosts…of the Civil Dead locates the source of the crisis not only within the prison, but also within the ideological, political, economic and media environment. Prisons exist not within a vacuum, but are a reflection of the society in which they operate. As Winston Churchill famously said, "The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country" (13).

The failure of the rehabilitative ideal, lack of media visibility, political and economic self-interest and poor institutional management all combine to create what has been termed a 'crisis of legitimacy' (14). The prison system fails to provide a sense of justice to public, professionals and prisoners and so lacks moral legitimacy. Such a crisis "cannot be solved unless we change people's ideas about punishment" (15).

The film closes with the concluding words of the report submitted to the Committee on the Judiciary:

"Central Industrial prison has been assigned the most difficult of tasks, to protect law-abiding citizens from this country's most dangerous men. Given the nature of that task, incidents such as those that brought about the October 25 lockdown will inevitably occur.

In order that free society may live secure in the knowledge that it is adequately protected, this report strongly recommends that the administration of Central Industrial be given every measure of financial and moral support.

The report also recommended that the Bureau of Prisons immediately begin construction of a new 'super-maximum security' facility".

The depressing conclusion is that the crisis has not been resolved, but will only get worse. In reality, since this film was made, some of the worst excesses of the just deserts and humane containment philosophy may have receded. However, as long as law and order politics, three strikes-style sentencing, no-frills prisons and tough on crime polemics continue, these ghosts will haunt us.

References

(1) see Public Opinion and Sentencing Policy by Julian V. Roberts in Reform and Punishment: The Future of Sentencing Edited by Sue Rex and Michael Tonry (Devon: Willan 2002) p. 24

(2) A prison film is one that is wholly or mainly set in a prison or takes imprisonment and its consequences as a primary theme. See Nellis, M. British Prison Movies: The Case of 'Now Barabus' in The Howard Journal Vol. 27 No.1 (1988) p.2, Inside Observations by Wilson, D. in Screen Vol.34 No.1 (1993) p.78, Mason, P. Systems and Process: The Prison in Cinema http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue06/features/prison.htm (1998a) p.2 and Mason, P. Men, Machines And The Mincer: The Prison Movie http://www.usfca.edu/pj/articles/Prison.htm (1998b)

(3) Surette, R. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice (West/Wadsworth 1997) p.1

(4) Querry, R.B. Prison Movies: An Annotated Filmography 1921 - Present in The Journal of Popular Film Vol. 2 No. 2 (1973) identified over 200. Nellis M. ibid (1988) estimated that this had risen to over 300. The number now probably stands at over 350.

(5) see Wilson, D. Lights, Camera, Action in Prison Report No. 60 (2003) p.27-9 and Zaner, L. The Screen Test: Has Hollywood Hurt Corrections' Image? In Corrections Today Part 51 (1989) p. 64-66, 94-5

(6) Nellis, M. Notes on the American Prison Film in Nellis, M. & Hale, C. The Prison Film (London: Alternatives to Prison 1981) p. 44

(7) For excellent descriptions of the prison film genre see Mason, P. (1998a & b). For a broader but more superficial description of prison films see Crowther B. Captured on Film: The Prison Movie (London: BT Batsford 1989)

(8) Von Hirsh, A. Past or Future Crimes: Deservedness and Dangerousness in the Sentencing of Criminals (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1986)

(9) Ericson, R.V., Baranek, P.M., and Chan, J.B.L. Representing Order: Crime, Law And Justice In The News Media (OU Press 1991) p. 349

(10) Surette, R. ibid p. 49

(11) Martinson, R. What Works? - Questions and Answers about Prison Reform in The Public Interest No.35 (1974) p.22-54

(12) Chomsky, N. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (New York: Seven Stories 1991) p.22-3

(13) Gilbert, M. Churchill: A Life (London: Pimlico 1991) p. 214

(14) Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. The Penal System: An Introduction (London: Sage 1997) see particularly Chapter 1 p. 8-31.

(15) Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. ibid p. 30

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