A new documentary follows a white mafioso (John Piccirillo), a black ex-gangb*nger (Sam Lewis) and a veteran prison warden (Ben Curry) preparing to deal with a fundamental change in the codes they live and die by.
Award-winning filmmaker Noel Schwerin went into the state prison in Soledad repeatedly over a span of seven years and emerged withIn An Ideal World.
From a wider perspective, it’s about how our ideas of justice hold up in the harsh institutional realities of prison.
The two facilities that comprise Soledad prison house about 9,000 inmates. In August of this year, a riot broke out among 90 inmates; in October of last year, an inmate was stabbed and killed. Warden Curry describes the place as overcrowded and underfunded.
The film shows stark shots of bars, metal doors, razor wire and chains, of men working out on the yard and roaming on cell blocks, of alarms sounding and guards suiting up in riot gear. One inmate signs a form with a pen stripped to just the ink tube so it can’t be used to stab.
“[Prison] is an unapologetic display of power, organized in racial and ethnic lines,” Schwerin says. “It’s explicit.”
In the case ofJohnson v. California, an inmate charged that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s de facto racial segregation, which was supposed to stop violence and conflict, violated his 14th Amendment right to equal protection. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed. And that decision causes havoc in the system.
Generally, what happens in prison stays in prison. Schwerin emerged, though, with stories that regard the inmates as human beings and not as the monsters of shows likeLockup.
First, Schwerin had to find the right prison. She says she’s visited a number of prisons, and that “old-school” Soledad felt right because it was free of pretense.
“It lacks the practiced patina of a place like San Quentin that is used to the press and where everyone knows what to say in front of a camera,” she says. “If I could get people to trust me, I would be getting something no one had seen or heard, something authentic and undisturbed.”
Filming started as a new program called Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) began. Schwerin used patience and discretion, becoming, over time, a reliable part of the scenery of the place.
AVP is basically group meetings in which prisoners from different races, who normally self-segregate for protection and power, come together and share their thoughts and feelings through various exercises. It’s by tapping into emotions, empathy and reflection that these men – gangsters, murderers and robbers – seek to regain some humanity back.
It comes slowly. They do a version of musical chairs called “jailbreak,” locking arms and laughing. They pair up and face each other, some of them mortal enemies, to talk about sadness and regret. They roleplay conflicts that a prisoner named Mellow Man comes in to mediate.
Are they playing nice to earn parole, or are they really trying to rehab themselves? They admit their hearts are hard.
“You cannot ask a black to celly-up with a Sureño,” a black inmate says. “Some people don’t understand ‘Will you please pass the pepper?’ But if you reach over and smack the [sh*t] out of him… ”
John, an imposing, self-described shotcaller among white inmates, says, “I used to make men, whites, do things that they would not normally want to do.”
A guard says of former gangb*nger Sam: “I was here when he first came in, 18 years old. He was an extremely violent person. You had to keep an eye on him.”
That was 24 years ago. When Schwerin and her camera crew find him, he’s made a pact with his daughter that he would not fight anymore, and he’s an engaging leader of black inmates in AVP.
The film does not resort to scare tactics, but it’s also not soft-focus either. It feels faithful. Those seven years pay off with a story about individual humanness in a bigger social order.
Spurred by activists, policymakers and politicians are taking another look at the correctional system, their function in and effect on society.
“We’re at a moment in criminal justice where there’s a window of opportunity that hasn’t existed in a long time, to think about it as individuals’ stories instead of just the numbers,” she says. “It’s time for reassessment. Should it be punitive? Rehabilitative? Do people change? Can you change an institution?”
Some of the principals in the film will attend the Dec. 3 screening, organized and hosted at the World Theater by CSUMB’s Cinematic Arts & Technology department. (Disclosure: My wife, Enid Baxter Ryce, is the chair and invited the filmmaker to screen there.) They will talk in a panel moderated by Schwerin, including the former and current wardens, the formerly incarcerated, law enforcement, restorative justice, drug and mental health, and gang reduction reps.
Many encounter Soledad prison from a distance, driving by on Highway 101. But inside is a place full of human beings locked up in a social experiment that may be changing course. The film is a peek into what that may look like.
