''This is a true story. Although the characters are composites of real men, and time and place have been compressed, every detail of the escape is the way it really happened.'
The Great Escape
Turns out, the two images on the previous page, and the two images just below, were from a piece by writer Bruce Jackson about Prison farms. I had no idea that most prisons in the South in the 20th century were Agricultural Prisons. Prisoners, accompanied by armed guards, were taken out to the fields each day to perform hard, sweaty, and back breaking labour. All of this was usually unpaid.
Cummins Prison farm, Arkansas
Prisoners, prison life, and especially prison showers have been fetishized for decades. It began mostly with female inmates, and the many sexploitation films from the 70's and 80's. Male prisoners have been fetishized as well, especially in gay adult films, but men have been mostly spared the more mainstream sexploitation treatment that women have had to endure.
While women's prison films focused on the sex, male prison films focused more on the violence. Yes, many projects included elements of rape, or the threat of rape, but with women, it more often played as erotic. With men, it was act of violence.
Having work for social service agencies, I know there is rarely anything erotic about prison. While I know many men and women need to be there, more often that not, it was the poor who ended up behind bars, and not always the guilty. I am one of those annoying people who believes regardless of circumstance, everyone deserves to be treated with a level of human decency.
Prisons unfortunately, often focus on control over safety, meaning abuse from guards is common. It may not be sexual or physical, but careers like prison guards, (and Ice agents) often unfortunately draw in so many people, unable to control their own lives and home situations, so they seek jobs that allow them to control the fates of others. Despite methods to weed out these people, it still happens all the time.
The images above and below show prisoners returning from a day of field work in the Hughes Unit in Gainesville Texas. After a day outside the walls, all prisoners were required to have a strip search before heading back to their units.
Forced nudity and strip searches are a part of prison life, and they're certainly needed to ensure everyone's safety. Still, there is something interesting, and yes, even erotic about some of these images. Maybe it goes to the fantasy or fetish, but to me, the appeal is about the history and the stories behind them.
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