BONUS: Lights, Cameras, Incarceration - Are We Simplifying Prison Life?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:00

Hello, and welcome to this bonus episode of A History Recorded straight after our recently published episode, why Does America have so Many Prisons? I'm joined now by the guests from that episode, Nicholas Grant and Heather Ann Thompson, to discuss this a little bit more.

Thank you both for hanging on.

Heather Ann Thompson: 00:00:17

So glad to do so.

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:18

Yeah, we had such a great conversation about the whole prison system in America and all the issues surrounding that. I did mention during that. That episode that I was a bit of a true crime fan with my wife.

And we do love to sit down in the evening and watch usually some show about how the American justice system or prison system is horribly flawed. But, you know, I do wonder about all of those TV shows that we see about prisons in America.

Do you think shows like, you know, 60 days in and all these other ones kind of glorify incarceration a little bit?

Nicholas Grant: 00:00:53

Yeah.

I'm not sure about glorify, but I think simplify and simplify the prison experience and rely on certain kind of tropes I don't think are particularly helpful in terms of thinking about what it's like to be incarcerated, what that means.

We have, like, in this country a lot of, you know, British documentarians who like to go to America and do kind of deep dives and into mass incarceration and hypersecurity prisons and things like that.

And there's something that's very, I think, like, kind of quite ghoulish about it and quite voyeuristic in a way which I think further dehumanizes prisoners and kind of the way in which brutality and violence within prisons is talked about kind of further does that too. And that's just my kind of own point of view. And I find it very uncomfortable watching some of that stuff, I think.

I know we talked about it a little bit in the episode, but if you think, you know, read kind of Heather's book about Attica and Blood in the Water, you get a very, you know, what. The brutality is certainly there, but it's brutality from kind of prison guards in the state. That's very targeted.

But you do get a sense of, like, the prisoners as human beings with wants and desires and kind of hopes and really kind of clear thoughts about what freedom and human rights might mean in their current situation. So I think I.

Hollywood Streaming Services Crew Triumph does a disservice too often to the people who find themselves in prison, often doesn't explain why they're there, and further dehumanizes them in a way that I think creates social barriers that might be an obstacle to some of the work that people are trying to do in terms of reforming the prison system or maybe abolishing it as well.

Heather Ann Thompson: 00:02:38

It's kind of interesting, too, because I'm thinking.

I totally agree with what you said, Nick, and I think it also maybe is worth thinking about even that question historically, a little bit, or historically, over the last 20 years, because certainly there have been and continue to be a certain genre of television program in particular, that not only is exploitive and voyeuristic and ghoulish and all of the things that you said, Nick, but frankly has only filmed people in extremists, people in solitary confinement, people with mental illness, you know, and simplifying all of it and suggesting that they represent everybody who's behind bars.

I'm thinking of American shows like Lock Up Raw and, you know, all of these kinds of really kind of true crime, but also just shows like there's an American show called the 20, the 48 hours where, you know, I don't care how, you know, progressive you may be, by the end of it, you know, you're wanting them to get their guys and lock them up. And also you kind of realize, well, wait a minute. These.

These have been like juveniles who've been questioned for the last 12 hours without an attorney, and here you are rooting for them to go to prison. So there is the kind of that genre.

But then I think there's been in that moment of reform we talked about in the episode that we did, you know, there were shows where people were trying to change that narrative a little bit. You know, Orange is the New Black. I mean, not perfect, but certainly a show where you got to see women living behind bars in a more human way.

And, you know, the documentarians, I think, have played a really important role actually, in highlighting just what goes on behind bars. Don't forget, right? We vote for this, we support it, but we can't ever see what our money is really doing, what's really going on.

And documentarians have been able to lift that veil quite a bit. But now we know. And so now we know the kind of gratuitousness of it is, I think, becoming really problematic.

And certainly the shows where we are just rooting for the end of civil liberties and we're rooting for kids to do 30 years because they sold a bag of marijuana. Like, there's something fundamentally messed up about that media model.

Liam Heffernan: 00:05:09

I mean, talking of the end of civil liberties, let's just quickly touch on Trump for the five minutes or so that we have what do you think the impact of Trump 2.0 is going to be on systems like, you know, the prison system?

Heather Ann Thompson: 00:05:27

Devastating. Absolutely devastating. The private prison stock. The stock.

And anyone who was interested in caging human beings went through the roof when he was elected. Food. Food providers behind bars like Aramark have already been put on.

Not that they're scrambling to put together enough prepackaged meals to meet the demand in deportation centers. This is going to be a financial windfall for certain people in an absolute catastrophic situation.

I think, on the ground for people, and I wish I could say it differently, and I don't think it's permanent. The thing about American history is that it's never the same at the same time.

Always it will change, but in this, it's just going to be a very, very difficult time we're going into.

Nicholas Grant: 00:06:17

I think.

I also think, I don't know, talking from a British perspective, I think there's a tendency, and I've banged on about this in previous episodes, about how we like to see the worst social ills through the lens of America, particularly when it comes to race, and then not really interrogate that within the United Kingdom as well. And we have a very different government to the Trump administration, but there are some, like, crossovers and similarities.

And again, I think it comes back to that idea of needing to be tough on crime, needing to police immigration in particular. Right. We see all of those things in this country as well.

It might not be as bombastic and as extreme as Trump and his team kind of put out there, and there's headline grabbing.

But in terms of policy alternatives and shifts, I don't see anything really from our current government in the United Kingdom as a way of kind of challenging or providing alternative, even though we know that, you know, there are these alternatives out there, right, in terms of reform and limiting, reoffending and things like that. So I would just be kind of wary of us saying, look, it's going to be really bad in America because Trump is this. That's certainly true.

But then use that as a way of us saying, in the United Kingdom, we're okay, we're not as bad, it's all right. And actually, like, thank goodness we've got, you know, sensible Keir Starmer, nice liberal in charge because he is tough on crime. Right.

And that's how he's made his career. So I would be very surprised if we go down a different route to America in this country.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:51

Well, also, you've got Elon Musk really helping to channel resource into driving a more conservative narrative in the UK and the rest of Europe as well.

And that's potentially only going to mean, rather than the US look to the more liberal Europe, I think we could see a situation where it goes the other way around.

You know, parties in the uk, like reform, you know, start to gain a bit more authority in government and, you know, we could well see that the prison system in the UK just gets tougher as well.

Heather Ann Thompson: 00:08:21

Well, and then to end it potentially on a more optimistic note, I do think we also need to bear in mind that there's a lot of unknowns here. If Trump, for example, actually does everything that he says he's going to do, his base will suffer tremendously.

Earlier, we were noting the ways in which this brutal system works because people are allowed to think it works for them, too.

When grocery prices rise even further, when we end up in a war and people's children end up drafted for that war, when people can't get jobs because tariffs have been set up in such a way that it's impossible to do business in this country, it is possible.

We can't guarantee it, but it's possible that if he actually does what he says he's gonna do, the life lesson of America will be, God help us, don't do that. And raise possibilities for new labor coalitions and all kinds of things. But we will have to revisit this, right, Liam?

We will have to come back and touch base, see what's going on.

Liam Heffernan: 00:09:26

I will be dragging you back on the podcast kicking and screaming if I need to. We'll definitely revisit this. But no, it's a great point there, Heather.

And yeah, I think definitely this isn't an issue that's going away and something we will have to revisit. I thank you both, Heather and Nick, for joining me on this and also the main podcast to discuss all of this.

And for anyone listening, if you haven't yet, do check out the main episode. It's just a couple down on this feed and if you haven't already, click to follow the show and leave us a rating and a review as well.

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