The Cayuga Museum will host a new film and guided discussion series titled “Exploring the Prison through Film: A Journey with Dr. Lucien Lombardo.” The series will show four films, each exploring a different theme within the context of imprisonment. Each film will be screened and then followed with a conversation guided by Dr. Lucien Lombardo, who will place the themes of the film in context in penal history.
The series begins on Tuesday, October 18 at 6 pm with the 1932 film “20,000 Years in Sing Sing,” starring Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis. Exploring the theme of managing a prison, this film was loosely based on an influential book by Lewis Lawes, Warden of Sing Sing. Scenes from the movie were filmed at Sing Sing, using real prisoners as extras.
The series continues with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” exploring the human experience of imprisonment in November, and “Brubaker,” examining the prison reform process in February. The series will conclude with a documentary, “The Last Graduation: The End of College Programs for Prisoners,” in March.
Dr. Lombardo, an Auburn native who began his career as a teacher in Auburn Prison in 1969, went on to a distinguished career in criminal justice academia. His teaching and research have explored the working lives of correctional officers, prison policy processes, collective violence in prisons, the violence process: from suicide to genocide, and violence in the world of children.
All films will be shown in Theater Mack, 203 Genesee Street, Auburn, behind the Cayuga Museum. Admission is $5 Museum members, $7 public.
For more information contact Eileen McHugh, Cayuga Museum, at (315) 253-8051.
About 1898 my Great Grandfather Leonard Burdette Parish executed a prisoner at the Auburn State Prison because the State executioner refused to execute the prisoner because of threats of death to him and his family nobody else in the State Prison system would do it so they called in The Last Gunfighter my Great Grandfather Leonard Parish and he full filled the execution order. But according to dead heads in Albany he never exsisted .
Prior to moving to NJ, a prison in its own way, I spent 10 years working first for the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and then as an administrator for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, one of only two states to still use “Rehabilitation” in their official title, implying that we still believed in doing more than warehousing people.
Films, be it fiction or documentary, have an agenda. Sometimes it is from the viewpoint of the innocent murder. Sometimes, it is from the viewpoint of law enforcement. Almost always the film portrays a negative picture of the people who work in corrections and law enforcement. And, always, the story is told by someone with no direct knowledge of law enforcement or working with inmates.
Films seek to manipulate the emotions of viewers, so that my the end of the film, the audience’s emotions have been molded into the into the view of the director/author. They use sound, light, and language to draw the viewer into their reality. And, because it is a world unfamiliar to most people, viewers are curious. I liken it to Amish fiction. For many people, those books are the closest people will get to Lancaster, PA. For most people, thankfully, film and television is as close as they will get to prison. But, both things are fiction.
Analyzing them exposes techniques used to capture the attention of the audience. Analysis makes one an intelligent viewer.
Most people don’t know that the majority of prisons were originally under the jurisdiction of state mental health agencies. After all, no normal person would commit a crime, so the person had to be mentally ill. Separate correctional agencies devoted to housing, and rehabilitation, didn’t come about until the prison numbers started to grow.
In the early 1900’s there was a prison boom in this country. Most older facilities were built during this time. Men’s facilities tend to be called correctional institutions or correctional facilities, while women’s prisons are called reformatories. Men must be corrected, while women can be reformed. Many women’s prisons were not initially fenced in, and the crimes for which they could be sentenced to prison included swearing, running away, or having a child out of wedlock. Most of the women’s prisons had nurseries, a trend being revived as part of larger reentry programs. Mothers with close bonds to children tend not to re-offend, or so the few places with statistics claim.
As the number of inmates increased, so did the portion of the state budget dedicated to feeding and housing inmates, and taxpayer objections. Everyone wants criminals in prison. No one wants to pay for it. People want inmates to work, but people don’t want inmates taking jobs from “real” people. Should an inmate mow the grass, or a paid employee? People want inmates rehabilitated, but they don’t want to pay for education beyond high school, only trades, though some colleges and universities have educational programs allowing inmates to earn degrees. People think inmates should use prison to better themselves, yet the first funding cuts when there are tight budgets eliminate such programs, and I have yet to meet anyone willing to donate books to a prison library. I once ended a vacation early on the promise of a library book sale promising to donate all unsold books. The books HAD to be gone by Sunday evening. When I first suggested it, a worked sneered and told me they could find a better place for them. I came home early for 2 small boxes. No one could tell me what happened o the rest. How are inmates to become better people if denied something as worthwhile as a book? Someone who would deny them books isn’t going to hire them, or want to sit next to them at church.
One researcher even proposed that the size of one’s forehead demonstrated a propensity to become a criminal. Large wide foreheads were of concern. Another researcher, from Penn State, claimed that women committed more crimes than men, but, because of chivalry, the men took the blame, and served the time. He also felt that they weren’t caught as much. Since women were clever at hiding menstrual cycles, he reasoned they could hide crimes like shoplifting.
We have a very schizophrenic attitude toward inmates. We want them punished, but don’t want to fund prisons. We want them to work, but complain when they are given jobs. We want them rehabilitated, but refuse to fund education or hire them. We want them to stay out of prison, but we refuse to hire them or allow them into our churches. We think that work should be done to keep kids on the straight and narrow before they get into prison, but no one wants to volunteer for programs that work with kids. We object to the high costs, so alternatives such as house arrest and early parole were introduced, leaving people in, or returning them to, the same environments they were in when they got in trouble. In short, we set people up to fail.
Films sometimes reflect the schizophrenia. The things society demands, without providing the funding. But, they seldom present the issues as a lack of funding and interest.
Inmates are also not a homogeneous group. There are people who are truly evil, and it took a while to reconcile my religious beliefs with what I saw at work. There are also people who had few chances to succeed, and people who did something stupid, like while deer hunting, fire at a deer across the road, at the exact time a woman was driving between the hunter and the deer. I have graduate degrees, but the most intelligent people I ever met were in prison. The most musically talented people I have ever met were in prison. The most talented quilters and embroiderers I’ve met were in prison. The most talented artists I have met were in prison. I’ve never had an inmate lie to me, cheat me, or otherwise be disrespectful, and I can’t make that statement about people I’ve encountered who are not inmates. That said, in the end, life is a series of rational decisions, and people make conscious decisions about their actions.
If we put as much effort into keeping kids out of prison…. but no one wants to volunteer or do programs for kids.
Prison and incarceration are complicated issues. The closest film I know to the real story is “The Farm,” about Angloa’s prison farm, and it has biases. But, at least it has real inmates, and a real prison.