American public fascination with prisons and incarceration

PRISONS

AMERICA'S FASCINATION WITH PRISONS

AND INCARCERATION: TRUE or FALSE?

Are the American people truly fascinated (or perhaps obsessed) with prisons and incarceration? To partially answer this question, all one has to do is take a quick look at the number of films that feature a prison as the main focus of the story, films like the Shawshank Redemption, Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood, White Heat with James Cagney, plus a whole slew of other films produced in the last sixty years or so. According to Maura J. Casey,

Whether called correctional institutions or the clink, prisons hold an enduring fascination" for the American public, due in part to creating some very powerful human emotions, such as pity and fear, and a sense of loss or abandonment. After all, "Haven't most of us felt imprisoned at one time or another or longed for liberation?" (2007, Internet).

As an example, Casey examines in-depth the current fascination with Eastern State Penitentiary in the city of Philadelphia. This "massive, crumbling building rises up like a medieval castle (and) complete with ivy-covered walls, a tower and corner battlements, it casts a forbidding shadow over the city -- as it was meant to." In 2006, some 150,000 people paid a visit to this relic from the past with its "dark hallways... subterranean feel... (and) dusty corridors lined by crumbling walls." Within this dark and foreboding place, visitors can walk through the old cell blocks, stroll through the mess hall, the hospital and the prison chapel, "climb into a guard tower (and) peer into the cells of death row" (Casey, 2007, Internet).