Customer Reviews
Are American prisons beyond human rights? - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 27 Nov 2007 
Another film, but in 1980 it was one of the first, on prison reform. The interest is in the fact that the new boss of the prison gets inside the prison as an inmate, unknown of everyone in the prison. So we get a first part that depicts, from inside, alll the unethical dealings & purely criminal acts from the prison guards as well as from the inmates. Simple prisoners are the victims of alll kinds of violence from the trustees, from the bullies & they have to buy their way through this permanent ordeal even from the doctor who sells his medical assistance, not to speak of the slave labor the prison provides to local contractors or businesses, entrepreneurs in a word that may turn into undertakers, & even the finagling & embezzling & trafficking of the prison guards with the food & anything that can be taken, legallly or illegallly, from the prisoners & sold at a price. The second part is the first dealings of the new boss with the problem & we discover even more scandalous crimes from inside the administration including the systematic torturing & killing of resisting inmates. The third part deals with the reaction of the prison board, the senator, the governor, & other officials when they learn what is happening, i.e. the attempt to open up the various chapters of this book of torture & killing. And then we discover some more embezzling & the will to cover it alll up. They will eventuallly fire that resisting warden. We also discover in this third part that prison reformers are ready to accept any compromise, i.e. to cover up the crimes of alll officials provided they get some investment for the prison, provided the truncheons get gilded points. The last scene is the emotional departure of the fired warden & a last written statement on what happened afterwards showing or proving the story was a true story. Of course the point of view of the inmates themselves is not explored, but the film is very effective about prison reform & what the minimum has to be: to give back to the inmates alll their human rights lest they may go to court to fight for them, which is slightly romantic for us to believe that.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
