Hearing other people's opinions about Exit Through The Gift Shop has made me start to think it really is a big ole prank by Banksy. If so, then I freaking love it. Hope we find out the truth some day.
So today I watched a short documentary about life in solitary confinement. Prison life/reform has always been an interest of mine, stemming from a few criminology and corrections classes in college.
This 50 min. doc is set in one spot, a detention facility in Colorado that focuses on solitary confinement, or as it's officially known, "administrative segregation". We meet a handful of prisoners, learn about their daily lives, and discuss the effects, physical and mental, of life inside a cell.
What I learned: What I learned just really bummed me out. No surprise I guess.
Approx. 80,000 Americans are in solitary confinement at any one time. (That's 4 times the population of my college town).
Most prisoners in solitary got there for crimes or actions committed while already in prison; few go straight into solitary.
The first prison to integrate solitary was in1829 in Philadelphia. The idea was to imitate monks who would self-segregate to cleanse themselves and focus inward.
What I liked: You got to know some of the prisoners, and they were surprisingly honest and self-aware. Most of them knew what they did was only going to get them in more trouble (yelling at guards, getting in fights, etc). It was as if they didn't have control of their actions. We meet guys serving 13 years in solitary. One guy was serving an 8 year prison sentence and got into some trouble, and got 100 years of solitary added to his sentence.
I also appreciated the facts and statistics. When I learn that 2/3 of prisoners kept in solitary confinement return to prison in less than 3 years, and that solitary has a suicide rate 4 times higher than normal prisons, my response is: "this isn't working, and needs to change". Why isn't the facility saying this?
What I didn't like: Everyone they interviewed had their heads up their asses. That's the biggest reason the system is so flawed, and why it won't be changed anytime soon. The interviewees can be divided into 3 main groups:
1. Prison employees, including the warden, who are so invested, emotionally and financially, in the current system, they will say and do anything to prevent reform. The warden treats her prisoners like they were children in need of time outs. She clearly has no interest in seeing them reform and return to society; she's just keeping them from hurting themselves or each other.
2. Sociologists and correctional researchers who, though overflowing with academic knowledge, have little to no real concept of what life in prison is actually like. Though they are usually fighting on behalf of the prisoners, they speak in such abstract, scholarly terms that it's plain to see they aren't worried about the individuals behind bars, but the principles that are being presented by their detainment.
3. And finally you have the actual prisoners, who have been taught, though a life of abandonment and abuse, not to trust anyone or put much faith in anything. They are locked away for years and basically told to disappear, then all of a sudden there's a camera in their face and they're expected to wax poetic about the trials and tribulations of their daily life. It's no wonder everything they say ends up sounding like a monologue from The Green Mile; it's all they know.
When these are the only voices in the dialogue of prison reform, it's no wonder nothing's changed since 1829.
I don't have any photos or vids to go along with this. I just highly recommend it. It's on Netflix.
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