Prisoners on Prison Films

This book explores how an audience of men serving sentences in an English prison responded to viewing five contemporary British prison films. It examines how media representations of prison vary in style and content, how film can influence public attitudes, and how this affects people in prison. The book explains the ways in which film acts as a power resource, presenting an ideological vision of criminal justice. The audience used these films to map the social terrain of prison, including issues of power and resistance; race and racism; corruption and the illicit economy; and staff-prisoner relationships, themes which are explored in the films screened. The authors argue that media consumption is one of the ways in which people in prison construct and maintain an ideal of the prisoner culture and what it is to be a ‘prisoner’. The book also reveals the ways in which audience members’ media choices and readings are part of the ongoing process of constructing their self-identity. This book illuminates the complex ways in which media consumption is an integral part of social power, cultural formation and identity construction. Recognising and engaging with audiencehood offers one potential route for supporting more progressive penal practice. This book speaks to those interested in prisons, crime, media and culture, and film studies.
Jamie Bennett is Senior Civil Servant in the Ministry of Justice, UK, a Research Associate at University of Oxford, and a former prison governor. He has published widely on topics including prison management, therapeutic prison regimes, and media representations of prisons. He has previously published six books including The Working Lives of Prison Managers (2015) and The Penal System: An Introduction (sixth edition, 2019).  Victoria Knight is Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University, UK. Her publications include Remote Control: Television in Prisons (2016) and the edited collection The Prison Cell (2020).