The 1994 hit movie, The Shawshank Redemption, is a riveting tale written by Stephen King in 1982 about the horrible injustices that incurred within the walls of Shawshank Prison in Maine in the 1940’s. The two central themes of the film are social justice and hope.
Wrongly convicted, Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), sentenced to two life terms for the murders of his wife and her lover, is the film’s protagonist. Written from the point of view of one of the other prisoners- Red (portrayed Morgan Freeman)- the film is able to convey the brutality of the life in prison by showcasing physical abuse, psychological torture and the emotional destruction that a prisoner undergoes behind prison bars. Andy, who worked as a successful banker before the crime, has to learn to get by in the cutthroat, brutal confines of prison life.
Superior-subordinate positions have been effectively depicted in the film. Many times, the guards and other domineering inmates have asserted their power through beating other prisoners as if they were merely objects without feelings and emotions. Additionally, the sight of the warden and prison guards looking down at the inmates symbolizes the existing relationship among them. The prisoners are reduced to nothing, having all dignity stripped from their lives. Nothing is left. Not even hope. Except for Andy.
The film succeeds in making the prisoners,elsewhere seen as a danger to society, so relatable that the audience forgets that they are convicted felons. They are rehumanized and we actually feel sympathy for them. We actually root for them because these felons have somehow become the good guys.
It makes us wonder, could something like that really have happened? And, do things like this happen in prisons today? With the media as intrusive as it is, you might not think so. It would seem that because many prisoners have access to email as well frequent visitors, plus several alloted phone calls, news of abuse would spread too easily. Yet, there are hundreds of recent reports of inmate abuse by prison guards. There are websites dedicated to publicizing these tales.
Prisoner lawsuits make up a significant amount of federal courts’ dockets, and some contain wild-sounding allegations. It is difficult to discern whether or not the allegations are true. Is the convict just trying to invoke the same sympathy viewers of the film had for the characters or has abuse and injustice really occurred?
In 2007, in a prison outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania a 10-year veteran corrections officer was fired and eventually charged with 3 misdemeanor counts of official oppresion. He ended up pleading guilty to forcing some inmates to kneel, sing nursery rhymes and bark like a dog. He was sentenced to nine months probation. In New York, a prison guard was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for covering up inmate on inmate beating. In Virginia, a 62 year old woman claims she was severly beaten by corrections officers at the Virginia Beach City Jail. Another recent case in Virginia occured when a prison guard was acquitted of harassing and tormenting a prisoner.
So what happens in a case like this when a prison guard is accused of abuse? The correction officer finds himself on the other side of the law and must hire his own Virginia lawyers.