Representations of prisons in the British media – or are we being fair to holiday camps?

Abstract

Although our criminal justice systems are massive operations involving many millions of people in various capacities, most people’s understanding of how they ‘work’ is largely derived from the mass media. And as the media invariably reports the most spectacular crimes which lead to the most severe punishments, much media coverage of punishment and justice focuses on prisons. This brief paper looks at the way the media represent prisons and imprisonment in Britain – in both real life and fictional contexts. It starts by considering the emergence of the modern prison and early media and literary commentaries before highlighting two contrasting aspects of the contemporary media representation – as easy going ‘holiday camps’ or as dangerous, violent, and demeaning institutions. The paper ends by considering how these differing pictures inform fictional representations of prison, using the popular British sitcom Porridge as illustration.