Watching this week's television, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that the UK’s current prison system is in desperate need of an overhaul
Watching this week’s television, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the UK’s current prison system is in desperate need of an overhaulor one of Louis Theroux’s jaunts around a jail, programme-makers – and therefore us at home – can’t get enough of what life is really like behind bars. This week alone, two programmes concerned with exposing the realities of prison life have made for excellent and heartbreaking television.
Of course, they’re not actually sent to prison, but the simulation producers have created – their fellow inmates are all reformed ex-convicts told to re-adopt their old incarcerated behaviours and personalities; the guards are all ex-screws – seems astonishingly, sometimes worryingly, authentic. While we’re assured that security is always on hand, a low level of threat is always hanging in the air.
and every other Ross Kemp doc gets the same message across: prison, in its current state, is not working.might be the first with a chance. The involvement and engagement of those who have the power to really apply what they’ve learned – ie, MPs and a journalist who work for one of the most popular newspapers in the UK – is a smart move from producers and gives the oft-silenced or ignored prisoners a chance to air their grievances on a nationwide platform.
But it’s a tall ask; no series that have come before have managed to inspire a radical overhaul of the prison system. It’s a depressing thought, but perhaps the best we can hope for from these programmes are those fleeting purgative moments of ex-prisoners given the emotional release of shouting in an MPs face.Television