The Representation of Prison Subculture Models in Mid-20th Century Hollywood Film

Abstract

In the mid-20th century, penologists shifted their focus from attempts to understand penal reform and offender rehabilitation/punishment to determining if there existed an inmate subculture and what that subculture was. Specifically, questions about how inmates adapted to the “pains of imprisonment” came to the forefront of penological discourse, with various models such as Clemmer’s origin of the prison community (i.e., prisonization) and Sykes’s deprivation theory dominating academic discussion. While the contemporary literature of the time was premised on the observational research by the aforementioned penologists, scholarly research has not examined the effect mid-20th century prison movies had on the formation or modification of the behavior of the persons observed, thus potentially impacting the development of these models. This paper presents a content analysis of four popular films produced during and shortly after the Great Depression. The argument is presented that these films could have potentially had a role in the development of the prison subculture models by these penologists, specifically as the media may have played a role in shaping the behavior of the subject (inmates and prison staff) they observed.