Films about people behind bars are often hard-boiled melodramas about the “big house,” such as 1937’s archetypal San Quentin, starring Humphrey Bogart. The Prison Within can also be quite dramatic and was actually shot largely on location at California’s San Quentin State Prison, but unlike the Warner Brothers’ classic, Katherin Hervey’s debut full-length film is a documentary.
With some camerawork by former inmate Troy Williams, The Prison Within focuses on the Victim Offender Education Group, a restorative justice program, which has been temporarily suspended due to COVID-19.
“I want to see these programs expanded into every prison. Now there’s a three-year waiting period”—rendered all the more urgent by the pandemic sweeping San Quentin and other prisons since this documentary was made.
The program brings multi-ethnic male prisoners convicted of violent crimes together with a group of facilitators, who meet regularly to carry out group therapy programs. The goal is to explore the roots of what Williams—who served eighteen years for kidnapping and burglary—calls the “psychological trauma” underlying criminal acts.
The program offers a “process of repair,” which includes inmates developing a sense of accountability and apologizing for the harm they caused. In taking responsibility for their actions, convicts are empowered to lead meaningful lives by “try[ing] to repair what was broken,” says program facilitator Sonya Shah.
The causes of the prisoners’ trauma vary. Barry Spillman, a white man sentenced to twenty years to life for murder, recounts the childhood violence he suffered at the hands of his father. During Spillman’s thirteen years in the military, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond, he claims to have assassinated six people—while always hoping he was pulling the trigger on his abusive father.
Shah, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and associate professor with twenty years of experience in social justice education and ten years of experience in restorative justice, talks about “events that have traumatized entire groups” and the “cycle of trauma” that can be passed down from one generation to the next.
Sam Johnson Jr. recalls growing up Black in racist South Carolina, musing: “I couldn’t understand why people hated me for the color of my skin . . . I carried a lot of pain—the power of not being treated as equal.” This section of the documentary reminded me of the writings of psychiatrist Frantz Fanon on the psychology of oppressed people suffering under the injustices of colonization.
The eighty-five-minute film takes a turn about halfway through with the appearance of Dionne Wilson, whose police officer husband, Dan Niemi, was gunned down in an ambush in 2005. Wilson, a young mother, brings the victim’s point of view to the documentary. She embarks on a crusade to get the death penalty for his shooter, Irving Ramirez. When Ramirez is convicted and sentenced to death, Wilson celebrates with “a giant party.”
But Wilson finds that “the burden on her heart” is “never lifted” by the verdict and expected retribution. This causes Wilson—once a self-described “hardliner conservative gun rights BBQ queen”—to undergo a remarkable transition. She writes Ramirez a letter apologizing for seeking the death penalty against him, embarks on a campaign against capital punishment, and works with the Victim Offender Education Group at San Quentin—where Ramirez is currently doing time on Death Row.
The Prison Within uses conventional, straight-forward documentary techniques and is narrated offscreen by actor Hill Harper (The Good Doctor). But the film’s talking heads are never dull because of the absorbing, astonishing stories that they all have to tell.
I found The Prison Within to be a tremendously moving motion picture experience that brings viewers inside a world where, with some luck, we’d never otherwise go. Hervey’s well-directed film is full of hope, compassion, and empathy—all useful in the ongoing debate over mass incarceration. It also offers some practical wisdom for the ironically mottoed “Land of the Free,” which in fact has the world’s highest incarceration rate.
Sujatha Baliga, director of The Restorative Justice Project - Impact Justice, takes issue with the notion that the Victim Offender Education Group “coddles” violent criminals. Herself a childhood victim of sexual abuse, Baliga argues that incarceration “produces crime” and “does nothing to help people turn their lives around.”
Program graduate Troy Williams, who was paroled in 2014 and became a Soros Justice Fellow in 2018, eloquently asks: “Which one of us do you want coming home? ‘Bone,’ the big badass gangbanger? Or Troy, the aspiring entrepreneur and filmmaker?”
As Wilson asserts: “I want to see these programs expanded into every prison. Now there’s a three-year waiting period”—rendered all the more urgent by the pandemic sweeping San Quentin and other prisons since this documentary was made.
The Prison Within will be released on all VOD/Digital & Blu-Ray/DVD platforms beginning August 25.