Let the punishment commence. Where is the prisoner? Then cast him down, master soldier. No no, in the pit! The Young Ones s1e6: Flood ***** opening scene in back garden, BBC 1982
Time and again I learned how one person’s struggle had grown into a crisis for their family and their community. Stroryville: The House I Live In, BBC 2013
Since 1971, the War on Drugs has cost more than $1 trillion and resulted in more than 45 million arrests. ibid.
‘Everybody involved hates what’s going on’. ibid. rozzer
With only 5% of the world’s population, the United States holds 25% of its prisoners. Over 500,000 are incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes. ibid.
Black Americans were disproportionately represented. ibid.
In the 1950s as drug use was growing among Americans of all backgrounds, Law Enforcement became increasingly focused on one group in particular. ibid.
Drug laws had done more to punish individuals and their loved ones than to mount a serious effort to prevent drug abuse. ibid.
Today 2.7 million children in America have a parent behind bars. ibid.
‘We have people doing a whole lot of time for not very much crime. It’s almost like they’re paying for our fear’. ibid. screw
Drug laws targeted any immigrant group seen as a threat to the established economic order. ibid.
With overwhelming support Ronald Reagan signed into law an unprecedented array of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. ibid.
‘What’s being taken from them is all hope in the future’. ibid. bloke
‘Wars on ordinary people’. ibid. expert
‘The drug war is a holocaust in slow motion.’ ibid. rozzer
The damage that decades of drugs laws have caused. ibid.
Across the United States more than 80,000 prisoners are held in solitary confinement. This film was shot over three years in the solitary unit of Maine State Prison. Storyville: Last Days of Solitary, BBC 2017, captions
‘This place is like an insane asylum. All sorts of craziness and if you don’t have a strong mind, this place will break you quick.’ ibid.
Shortly afterwards, a new warden was appointed to oversee the changes. ibid. caption
The new warden has started weekly rehabilitation classes for inmates in solitary. ibid.
Poverty is a problem. It destroys families; it creates a harsh reality for one to live in. So I’d like to say that knowing the odds are against you, use this rage for motivation. Only then will we be able to break the vicious cycle of racism, and the modern-day slavery which is dressed up as the Justice System. Storyville: Roger Ross Williams ***** Jailed in America, inmate Massachusetts
‘Before I turned 12 I witnessed murders. I was smoking. I was drinking. I shot my first gun probably about 11. And everything I was doing was normal.’ ibid.
In my home town of Easton, Pennsylvania, nothing stood taller than the jail on the hill. Every family had been touched by it. ibid.
Although I knew the statistics, seeing so many black men in cages made me furious. ibid.
Mass incarceration has become an accepted part of life for poor people and black people in America. ibid.
Today, America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Our jails and our prisons are mostly filled with poor people and people of colour. ibid.
The cost of running the criminal justice system is also enormous for the rest of us. ibid.
This $265-billion-dollar-a year-industry. ibid.
The fees that inmates pay for everyday services are several times what we pay outside of prisons. ibid.
‘The prison population doubled between 1990 and 2000.’ ibid. expert
Black defendants receive longer sentences for similar crimes. ibid.
Being tough on crime looks good at election time for a judge. ibid.
Cheap labour keeps the prison system running. ibid.
The psychological trauma of jail isn’t just shouldered by the person in prison. ibid.
We compromise our humanity … We become inhuman. ibid.
In the heart of Russia in a forest larger than Germany where winter temperatures drop to minus forty degrees, seven hours drive from the nearest city, two hundred and sixty men are locked up in a prison exclusively for murderers. Storyville: Russia’s Toughest Prison: The Condemned, BBC 2019, captions
Russia in the 1990s was like Chicago in the ’30s. It was real war. ibid. inmate
Here you realise you’ll never be free again. ibid.
Some of the most dangerous criminals in Russia are here. ibid. screw
The 260 inmates here are responsible for nearly 800 murders. The majority were on Death Row until Russia suspended capital punishment in 1996. ibid. captions
You’re just as likely to go mad outside as in here. ibid. inmate
Some still have hope … It’s just an illusion. ibid. screw
They have a sentence while I have a contract. ibid.
Lifers are allowed two family visits a year of four hours. No physical contact is allowed. ibid. caption
Where would I go? I have no idea. ibid. inmate
Since the beginning of the drug war, more than 160,000 suspected addicts and pushers have been locked up. Many are held for years without trial. Storyville: On the President’s Orders, BBC 2019
Inside New Folsom Prison in California, convicts meet weekly for group therapy as part of a rehabilitation programme. Most are serving long sentences for violent or gang-related crimes including murder, assault and robbery. Twice a year, with prison approval, members of the public are invited to join the convicts for four days of intensive group therapy. Storyville: The Work: Four Days to Redemption, captions, BBC 2019
51,000 men and 400 women are incarcerated in New York State. 950 have access to higher education. 300 are trying to earn college degrees in one of the most rigorous prison education programs in America: the Bard Prison Initiative, or BPI. Storyville: College Behind Bars I II, BBC 2020
On September 9th 1971 the inmates at Attica, 250 miles from NYC, took over the prison. It was the largest prison rebellion in US history. Storyville: Attica: America’s Bloodiest Prison Uprising, BBC 2024
The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless reforms that changed little. Dostoevski once said: ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’
It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present
Minister: How many to a cell?
Prison Governor: Four just about, sir. A Clockwork Orange 1971 starring Malcolm McDowell & Patrick Magee & Michael Bates & Warren Clarke & John Clive & Adrienne Corri & Carl Duering & Paul Farrell & Clive Francis & Michael Gover et al, director Stanley Kubrick
Soon we may be needing all our prison space for political offenders. ibid. minister
They enjoy their so-called punishment. ibid.
Excellent. He’s enterprising, aggressive, out-going, young, bold, vicious. He’ll do ... This vicious young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition. ibid.
At last men came to set me free
I asked not why, and reck’d not where
It was at length the same to me.
Fettered or fetterless to be:
I learned to loved despair. Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky. Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword. ibid.
The governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract. ibid.