Yvone Jewkes: "Crime and the Surveillance Culture"

In the article it mentions that we have experienced a rapid growth in the use of surveillance and it's like Big Brother watching us all the time and it doesn't even bother us because I think it's because we are so used to it. Some new technologies are created to track criminals or to prevent illegal acts but they should know that the criminals will always be 5 steps ahead of them. New technology also creates new loop holes for them to get around the system. I don't think there will ever be a way or stopping them from watching our every move. We are always being watched from our finger prints being taken, them watching our every move on the internet, they have cameras at every stop light, they can monitor our cell phones and land lines and our gps systems in our car.  Technology is just getting better year after year and won't ever go away. Jewkes makes a good point that surveillance at the end is a good thing. They are just trying to protect us and it reduces fear in our society.

Outside Source

reading about prison films reminded me of the show Prison Break. It was one of my favorite shows for awhile until it ended last year. In this show it showed corruption in this prison by the guards and warden. It also showed corruption with the nurses and doctors in the prisons. It's a show about how 2 brothers, one has been sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, and the other devises an elaborate plan to help his brother escape prison by putting himself in prison with his brother. Inmates get rapped and inmates build friendship and trust with each other.

The Shawshank Redemption Movie

This movie was a great movie to show corruption in the prison system. It also shows that the justice system can send an innocent man to prison for something he didn't do.  The warden, the security guards, and even the inmates all do illegal acts in Shawshank State Prison. You see inmates getting murder, you see inmates getting rapped, dealing drugs. This is what films portray to us how life is in prison for people. Not all movies have happy ending, but this one does. Andy gets away and he gets revenge on all the people who treated him badly.

Paul Mason "The Screen Machine" and Rafter Ch.6

In the article there has been little work on the effect of media representations of prison on public attitudes. The media coverage on prisons has contributed to the public's misinformation about prisons. This kind of misrepresentation on prisons don't only effect the public's information about them but also the the prisons practitioners.  People who get hired for to work for prisons go in there thinking they know how it will be and find out it is nothing like they were informed through films and news media. Most people get their information about prisons from movies, which most of the time are misrepresented. Also, if you think about it, you never see prison media in newspapers or on news channels. It's really hard to get information from the guards or anyone who works there.  Nelli's mentions in his article that there are no more than 12 different plots in all prison films that have been made, like escape, riots, inmate and officer violence, wrongful convictions, and etc. Since the 1940's prion films have declined and I bet it's because they are all the same and have the same plot line. No one likes watching the same stuff over and over, like they all tell you when you can eat, sleep, play and make phone calls. One thing prion films are good for are to make the audience think twice before committing a crime. I know I wouldn't want to be isolated from the world ever.

Rafter Ch. 6
 We find our self watching prison films because we like seeing justice served and we like to see it work properly, which isn't always the case.  When it comes to news media corrections and incarceration receives very little attention because they think it's not  newsworthy enough, which isn't true. I think the corrections and news media have failed to communicate with each other properly. We believe people who are in prison are being dehumanized but seeing movies that show them making friendships make us look at them more like humans like they are and not like animals locked in cages to be laughed at and watched. We hope that the system is working to rehabilitate them so when they are released in the real world they will  do what is right and set a new paths in their life. But we know most of the time this doesn't work. When locked in prison for so long inmates don't think they can make it in the real world so they commit more crime because that's all they know how to do and believe in. We watch these films because we want to see friendships building, we don't want to see them suffering alone, and to remind us that there are still good people in prisons.
 

Movie: Presumed Innocent

I really enjoyed this movie and I loved the twist at the end of the movie.  I liked how this movie kept me tuned in the whole time. The movie was about a prosecutor who was charged with the murder of his female colleague and mistress. This movie showed how the prosecutors lawyer was a corrupt one by black mailing the judge and bring up a file to scare the other lawyers and judge.  This movie always showed how the detective is corrupt by stealing the glass because that's all they needed to convict him.  Just shows up how ever level of the Justice System is corrupt and how it is influenced by politics.
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Outside Source

During this week I stopped to watch a couple of minutes of Judge Judy. The show was basically about a lady who was suing her ex husband for giving away the wedding ring he gave her to his new wife.  It was pretty funny and watching Judy get so mad and tell people to shut up is funny, I guess this is why this would be infotainment media.  At the end the lady won her case and was told to give his ex wife the ring back or pay her the amount it was worth. I guess it belonged to her because it was given to her and was no longer his to take.

"Film Lawyers: Above anf Beyond the Law" and Rafter Ch. 5

I really enjoyed the article.  They mention that law films are chosen as a site for film because of the dramaturgical aspects of the law and legal process and the subtext of the law being a useful cloak under which many other themes can be played.  I also learned that the most covered theme played out in many law films is the portrayal of lawyers in these types of films.  Also, lawyers take on cases that they aren't going to win but then win anyways.  There is always some kind of miscarriage of justice and they show that not all lawyers are ethical. We find that we like seeing lawyers do unethical things because sometimes they are morally correct, for example in the book To Kill a Mocking Bird . 

Rafter Ch. 5
In the reading it mentions that most all courtroom films include a justice figure, a hero who tries to move man-made law ever closer to the ideal until it matches the justice template. Most trial films shown on tv are fictitious. Like in the Greenfield and Osborn reading there is always a bad lawyer or good lawyer trying bend the rules in some way.  This is were is makes is more dramatic for the audience. We want to see the people who do bad things, get punished in someways. Law films don't always involve lawyers and court rooms, like CSI for example, you never see them in a court room. When you watch a lot of law films, they always have people on trial for the worse things ever like, rape or murder.  We never see law films where someone is being put on trial for speeding or stealing someones car.  There are 3 historical evolution in courtroom films: The Law Noirs 1930s-1950s where we have detectives and experimentation a decade where they searched for ways of depicting legal struggles. The Heroic Tradition from 1950s-2060s where they had less character flaws. Depletion of the Genre, where we are less invested in the heroism films and less trial films.