Over the holidays, I was able to see my goddaughter which was a treat. She is now in her teens and was excited to inform me that she was “an expert on prison life” because she had been watching episodes of OZ on DVD. I was struck dumb by her words and in the moment I could only respond with a tight smile and a nod of the head. Later we had a more in-depth conversation about OZ and about the differences between fiction and reality.

I read somewhere that there are more than 250 American films featuring men in prison and 100 focusing on women in prison. Let’s face it. Most people in America don’t know anyone who is currently or has been in prison since incarceration disproportionately impacts only certain groups. Most people have never set foot inside a prison either. As a result, popular culture images of prison fill this breach.

In the U.S., we learn about prison through books, music, movies, and television. These images greatly influence public perceptions. I think that they actually serve to reinforce unconscious racism which leads people to support more draconian measures to curtail what they perceive to be black and brown criminality.

Actual prisons do not resemble popular portrayals. Yet Americans’ views about prisons are shaped to a large extent by popular culture. On television and in films, people in prison are usually there for violent crimes, they are male and usually black. Some depictions feature wrongly accused prisoners often portrayed as white (think of Andy Dufrene in the Shawshank Redemption).

Prison stories in popular culture are framed in terms of personal responsibility and this obscures the structural factors and oppression that play a major role in landing people in prison in the first place. As such when asked why people are in prison, the public’s default response always focuses on personal failing. Popular culture depictions of prisoners feed into this narrative and I believe that this ultimately impacts public policy.

Imagined fears contribute to actual incarceration. As prison reformers and/or abolitionists, making the case for a dramatic reduction in the use of incarceration is made more difficult in the face of public fear and anxiety. Travis Dixon (2010) has written that Americans “have become so inundated by mass-mediated racial stereotypes that we are losing the ability to see past our racialized fears (p.107).” He goes on to argue that “unconscious racism underpins support for a punishing democracy that treats black men as criminals rather than as citizens (p.108).” I think that this is basically true and to be honest I don’t know how we even begin to address these ‘mass-mediated racialized fears.’ I came across an interesting initiative by the Open Society Institute called “Black Male: Re-Imagined” which aims to refashion the public image of young black men through the use of culture and media. I have no idea if this effort will succeed but I am rooting for it.