ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the mediated portrayal of prisoners. Since most of the American public has never been inside a prison, their mental image of prisoners and their resultant attitudes stem from their consumption of fictional media, reality television, and news coverage about prisoners. Specifically, it utilizes a literature review of existing prison media to demonstrate how prison media produces inmates as irredeemable savages. It also provides the results of some original work coding the content of streaming media about prisoners from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Utilizing the work of Joe Feagin, the chapter argues this consumption creates an Anti-Prisoner Frame which informs the public’s fear of prisoners and their opposition to their education.
