Saturday Nov. 29, 2008
Posted by David Rothenberg on Monday, December 1, 2008
Recently, the Sunday Daily News TV section boasted a cover that shouted out PRIME TIME FOR CRIME, calling attention to a CSI, one of the numerous shows pre-occupied with anti social behavior.
In fact, it is always prime time for crime. Start with the local news, which invariably opens with the crime of the day, no matter what else is happening in the world. The old axiom, if it bleeds, it leads, remains true.
A careful scanning of TV listings reveals that during a week’s span there is crime around the clock, starting with Law and Order and its off spins on which the sun never settles. And then there CSI, Lockup, Jails, Prison Break, NCIS, Cold Case Files, Cops,Carribbean Cops and American Jail. Take a breath… and there are other types such as Bounty Hunter and A&E investigating a crime a day. If you watch television long enough you may never want to leave the house. It is all about crime and prisons, with the latter particularly grizzly serving up real life variations of the fictional and over blown OZ of a few years back.
Lockup, Jails and Cops show perpetrators in a continual state of sneers and poses. Rarely do they probe the people who run the people who run the criminal justice system and perpetuate the alienation that exist within their confines.
Last week, as I have reported, I was in Green Haven prison, a maximum security institution, housing men with long sentences. They did not look like the men on Lockup who are in a state of continual machismo poses. As the several hundred men at Green Haven watched the play, the cast and I saw something not shown on Lockup or Jails. The audience was intensely watching former prison inmates, now in the play, THE CASTLE, telling their life stories in dramatic fashion. They watched with interest responding to every nuance with cries of recognition… and in the post performance Q&A, their remarks were probing, hopeful and emotionally revealing.
It is not my intent to romanticize the situation and convey the impression that sudden transformation took place before our eyes. But it suggested to me that all those programs on Lockup and Jail never talk about hope and changes with the men that they are filming.
The audience at Green Haven saw four people who had lived lives similar to theirs…. the throw away and abandoned childhoods, the alienation, the retreat into drugs and alcohol, the arrests and the prison terms… and through all of that they have reclaimed their lives. Over and over, men in the audience said, it various ways your story is my story and if you can make it, why can’t I. There were droplets of hope.
My first visit to a prison was over forty years ago as a theatre producer, in rehearsal with the prison drama, “Fortune and Men's Eyes”. With the actors, we were permitted a visit to Rikers Island, so that the cast could see the reality of what they wanted to convey on the stage.
I was the silent observer… and witness hundreds of young men being herded about .It seemed to me to be an exercise in institutional futility. My initial thought was that no matter what anyone did that landed them in such an environment, they couldn’t be anything else but worse upon completion of the sentence.
My view has never altered from that first impression. I also learned something else. Prisons don’t need an economic crisis for there to be program cuts. College courses were eliminated in NY State amidst economic prosperity, even though all evidence indicates that released prisoner with a college education have a remarkably lower recidivism rate. Education, of course, widens options. Even literacy classes for the multitude of incarcerated persons who cannot read, are not a priority around the country.
Politically, we are entering a new period of hope and change, albeit with a depressing economy lurking. Let us see if creativity and humanity can be part of the viewing of our prison system. WE can’t afford to waste such human potential. I have been witness to the new lives achieved by men and women given a second chance.
Many TV crime shows have sponsors that represent corporations that prosper with contracts with prisons and jails. The more institutions there are, the more prosperous they are. Crime has been part of their mission. The selling of crime has to be part of the new assessment of criminal justice.
And I haven’t even discussed the shelter system which swallows up thousands of released prisoners each year, keeping them in an environment that almost guarantees their return to prison.
Can we meet all these challenges? Government will only see this has a priority if there is an informed, alert and active constituency calling this to their attention. The challenge you see is ours.
I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb.
In fact, it is always prime time for crime. Start with the local news, which invariably opens with the crime of the day, no matter what else is happening in the world. The old axiom, if it bleeds, it leads, remains true.
A careful scanning of TV listings reveals that during a week’s span there is crime around the clock, starting with Law and Order and its off spins on which the sun never settles. And then there CSI, Lockup, Jails, Prison Break, NCIS, Cold Case Files, Cops,Carribbean Cops and American Jail. Take a breath… and there are other types such as Bounty Hunter and A&E investigating a crime a day. If you watch television long enough you may never want to leave the house. It is all about crime and prisons, with the latter particularly grizzly serving up real life variations of the fictional and over blown OZ of a few years back.
Lockup, Jails and Cops show perpetrators in a continual state of sneers and poses. Rarely do they probe the people who run the people who run the criminal justice system and perpetuate the alienation that exist within their confines.
Last week, as I have reported, I was in Green Haven prison, a maximum security institution, housing men with long sentences. They did not look like the men on Lockup who are in a state of continual machismo poses. As the several hundred men at Green Haven watched the play, the cast and I saw something not shown on Lockup or Jails. The audience was intensely watching former prison inmates, now in the play, THE CASTLE, telling their life stories in dramatic fashion. They watched with interest responding to every nuance with cries of recognition… and in the post performance Q&A, their remarks were probing, hopeful and emotionally revealing.
It is not my intent to romanticize the situation and convey the impression that sudden transformation took place before our eyes. But it suggested to me that all those programs on Lockup and Jail never talk about hope and changes with the men that they are filming.
The audience at Green Haven saw four people who had lived lives similar to theirs…. the throw away and abandoned childhoods, the alienation, the retreat into drugs and alcohol, the arrests and the prison terms… and through all of that they have reclaimed their lives. Over and over, men in the audience said, it various ways your story is my story and if you can make it, why can’t I. There were droplets of hope.
My first visit to a prison was over forty years ago as a theatre producer, in rehearsal with the prison drama, “Fortune and Men's Eyes”. With the actors, we were permitted a visit to Rikers Island, so that the cast could see the reality of what they wanted to convey on the stage.
I was the silent observer… and witness hundreds of young men being herded about .It seemed to me to be an exercise in institutional futility. My initial thought was that no matter what anyone did that landed them in such an environment, they couldn’t be anything else but worse upon completion of the sentence.
My view has never altered from that first impression. I also learned something else. Prisons don’t need an economic crisis for there to be program cuts. College courses were eliminated in NY State amidst economic prosperity, even though all evidence indicates that released prisoner with a college education have a remarkably lower recidivism rate. Education, of course, widens options. Even literacy classes for the multitude of incarcerated persons who cannot read, are not a priority around the country.
Politically, we are entering a new period of hope and change, albeit with a depressing economy lurking. Let us see if creativity and humanity can be part of the viewing of our prison system. WE can’t afford to waste such human potential. I have been witness to the new lives achieved by men and women given a second chance.
Many TV crime shows have sponsors that represent corporations that prosper with contracts with prisons and jails. The more institutions there are, the more prosperous they are. Crime has been part of their mission. The selling of crime has to be part of the new assessment of criminal justice.
And I haven’t even discussed the shelter system which swallows up thousands of released prisoners each year, keeping them in an environment that almost guarantees their return to prison.
Can we meet all these challenges? Government will only see this has a priority if there is an informed, alert and active constituency calling this to their attention. The challenge you see is ours.
I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb.
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