Outside Cultural Events 1: Prison Nation

                In film, prison is typically depicted as a place filled to the brim with violent criminals, run by gangs, and made to look as terrible as possible be it the brutalist architecture or the slop given as food. While some prisons might be this way, all are not. The majority of the people in prison are non-violent offenders and this exhibition brings a light to that. When you look at the pictures of people, that’s all they seem to be, people. They don’t appear to be savages or really any different from you and I, a person with hopes and dreams, a family, a life. When you look past the people you see spaces that while they may look similar to the movies but feel different. They are actually lived in, each made their own by the few personal belongings of the people residing in them, each differing from the last despite the overall conformity. The event did a great job of bringing a sense of humanity to the people in prison while contrasting that to their bleak surroundings and utter lack of humanity imposed on them by society and public opinion. Yet despite all that, some people still had a smile on their face, trying to make the best of what life had dealt them. It made me wonder if some of the people show in the pictures truly deserved it, if they truly deserved the complete removal of rights they faced. If I were in the same situation, would I have done the same thing? When most of these people are non-violent, is punishment truly the move, or should rehabilitation be the aim?

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