Throughout history, there has been a link between imprisonment, race, and visuality. Black radicals like Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, and Angela Davis have attempted to dismantle this connection through their written work during the Black Power Movement. Immediately after this movement begins the era of mass incarceration, that continues to use images of the black criminal to tie race to imprisonment. In his short film, “Inside Out: Arts in Corrections Facilities,” James E. Hinton uses the visual medium of film to disrupt the link between race, prisons, and visuality.

 THE PRISON AS A VISUAL INSTITUTION

Ever since slavery, race has been linked to a visual tradition of punishment and imprisonment. Runaway slaves were depicted in ads and usually given vague descriptors that could apply to multiple people. This had the effect of creating a link between the observable trait of black skin and the condition of chattel slavery. On the other hand, punishment before prisons was meant to be a public spectacle in order to deter other people from performing a similar action rather than rehabilitate the actor. The act of lynching was a way to continue this tradition of punishment as a visual spectacle. Once the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except in the case of punishment for a crime, the visual traditions of slavery and punishment came together to form the current system of mass incarceration. This system was created ostensibly to deter rising crime rates, but in actuality has simply reified the link between the prison and race.

The Black Power Movement

The Black Power Movement spurred the modern prison abolition movement of which Angela Davis has been a major actor. In his book, Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver describes the experience of being incarcerated and his own transformation. This book disrupts the link between imprisonment and race because it provides credibility to the notion of rehabilitation within prison. In both Soledad Brother and Angela Davis: An Autobiography, George Jackson and Angela Davis detail family structure within prison, which humanizes the prisoners and portrays them as not outside society, but deeply of and within it. It is stories like theirs that helped people to realize that they should not be afraid of prisoners or their members, because they can be successful members of society.

Hinton's Use of the Visual Medium

Inside Out: Arts in Corrections

Continuing this trend is James E. Hinton’s film “Inside Out: Arts in Corrections.” It is a documentary produced and directed by Hinton in 1979 using a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. As such, it has an argument that arts programs in corrections should be supported because they help rehabilitate prisoners and prepare them for release. Hinton showcases juvenile arts programs in the Minnesota Metropolitan Training Center at Lino Lakes that teach values like discipline and self-control that they will need later in life. He also shows an improv program at Rikers Island that is run coed, allowing the women and men to build better relationships with people of the opposite sex to prepare them for life after incarceration. Finally, he shows the Wildcat Group, a theater troupe of ex-prisoners who continue their acting after life in prison and visit the prison to lead workshops. By filming within the prison, Hinton demystifies what it is like in the same way that Black Power era writers did by writing from within prison. However, the visual medium that he uses is radical because it disrupts the idea of punishment as a visual and racially motivated spectacle and instead creates a multiracial prison that is a stepping stone towards rehabilitation and successful citizenship.