Prison Decayed: Cinematic Penal Discourse and Populism 1995–2005

Abstract

The increased populist and punitive turn in criminal justice policy in the United Kingdom over recent years has led to punishment becoming politicised, harsher and more ostentatious. The role of media and popular culture discourses of prison is rarely examined in this account. Adopting a Foucauldian discourse analysis of prison films released over the past 10 years, this article explores the prison film as one important element of the discursive regime. It seeks to investigate what representational practices are at work, how they limit the meaning of prison and prisoners, and how this may contribute to debates about the nature and aim of prison in contemporary society. It argues that several discursive practices exist in cinematic representations of the incarceration that strengthen support for the use of prison. The explicit and recurring depiction of violence in most prison films over the past 10 years, while appearing to offer evidence for prison reform, does the opposite. This paper suggests that discourses around the futility and inhumanity of incarceration are scant, replaced by scenes of prison violence; rape and death appear, which appear to exist purely for the pleasure of the spectator: a generic feature of the prison film. Secondly, prisoners are largely constructed as an inhuman other: a danger to society and deserving of harsh punishment. Consequently, the discursive regime of prison in cinema over the past decade constructs prison as not only necessary, but as the only process for crime control and reduction.

Keywords:

• Prison
• cinema: media
• Foucault
• prison abolition
• penal populism

Notes

¹While discourses of masculinity in prison films are an important element of the genre, an exploration of these tropes falls outside the scope of this article. It is interesting to note that while there has been considerable work on masculinity and film, and masculinity and prison (see, for example, Savran 1988; Jewkes 2001; Sabo, Kupers, and London 2001; Beynon 2002; Dyer 2002; Lancaster 2002), specific analysis on masculinity and the prison film has been relatively scarce (Jarvis 2004; Schauer 2004; Ek 2005).

²The one exception in the sample was The Green Mile (directed by Frank Darabont, 1999), in which the central character is Paul Edgecomb, a head prison guard on death row.

³There 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).