Behind A Convicts Eyes, Behind Prison Walls in a Modern American Prison essays

Behind A Convict's Eyes, Behind Prison Walls in a Modern American Prison essays 1950's films about babes behind bars' aside, even Hollywood has had difficulty fully romanticizing the experience of prison. Even Hollywood shows a prison that eviscerates the human soul in a horrific fashion, as seen in films such as "Hurricane" and "Animal Factory." The protagonists of both films are changed forever because of their prison experiences. They are, and this is perhaps the Hollywood' element of their story, changed for the better. But the changes come more along the lines of a what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' line of narrative argument, rather than because prison fulfills an essentially rehabilitative function. It would be nice if prisons could rehabilitate as well as destroy. But the nature of the system seems to do more to keep individuals whom are harmful to society, away from the rest of so-called law abiding society, rather than to really change the ineffective life patterns and emotional coping mechanisms that exist within the structural life patterns of criminals. Behind A Convict's Eyes does little to alter this sense of prison as a holding cell' of the human soul, a site of stasis rather than of shifting consciousness for most. Perhaps this is because the central protagonist will never leave the prison whose existence he discusses. But it may also be because of the nature of the incarceration system as a Behind A Convict's Eyes as a real-life depiction of life in modern American prison lacks even the Hollywood touches of a protagonist denied justice, or the solidarity that ostensibly exists behind bars. There is a prison culture,' the book makes clear. Just as a criminal culture encouraged individuals to participate in criminal activity while they were living on the outside,' similarly there is also a culture of the criminally incarcerated that exists on the inside of prison walls. But the sadness and the hopelessness o...