Eastern State Living Behind the Walls (2007)
Directed by Tony Alosi
Genres - Culture & Society |
Sub-Genres - Law & Crime, Social Issues, Sociology |
Run Time - 76 min. |
Countries - United States |
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Synopsis by Nathan Southern
Documentarist Tony Alosi's Eastern State Living Behind the Walls explores the issue of prison reform on several levels. Beginning with a historical footnote - it touches on the fact that the first prison reform group met at Ben Franklin's house in 1787 - Alosi explores key moral and ethical issues related to prison reform at Eastern State Penitentiary, one of first institutions designed for inmate rehabilitation. Intriguingly, that institution's method of reform is grounded not in psychotherapeutic counseling (as might be expected), but in solitary confinement, originally considered a form of psychological torture but now doled out as punishment - making the penitentiary even more hotly-contested than it might otherwise be. More broadly, Alosi uses his subject to explore the concepts of punishment and reform per se and how they occasionally contradict, and occasionally complement each other behind prison walls.
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Keywords
inmate, prison, prison-reform, punishment, reformatory, rehabilitation [criminal], solitary-confinement