In some ways, HM Prison Manchester (more commonly known as Strangeways) is a Manchester icon. After all it gave its name to a Smiths album (Strangeways Here We Come). The prison itself was built in 1868 by Alfred Waterhouse, who later designed the town hall – and if you think about it these two buildings are a neat embodiment of Victorian urban life. On the one hand, public works, clean water, slum clearances and municipal socialism; the promise of reform, and on the other hand a dysfunctional system riven with violence, upper class moralising, authority; the threat of punishment. The carrot and the stick. So it’s easy for a Manc to think about Strangeways in symbolic terms.
At first glance the recent three part documentary on the prison broadcast on ITV (‘Strangeways’, 9th, 16th and 23rd May) appears to belong somewhere in this tradition. In the opening credits the camera slowly zooms in on a shot of the prison gates at twilight, while over the top we hear the voices of a group of prisoners in prayer: “I confess to almighty God, and to my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…”
Music plays while a young man is led through a yard with his hands cuffed behind his back, a child of about five wearing her best outfit to visit her dad is searched and scanned with a metal detector, a man is carried along a corridor by his hands and feet, a voice shouts “move to the back of the cell and drop your weapon”, a young black man folds his arms in front of him and bows his badly bruised head. A heavyset man in an Everlast sweater spreads his arms wide to be searched with a look on his face that seems to carry all the sorrow of the world, a dog barks, a man in a gym lifts weights, a visitor holds a prisoner’s hand. Then the shadow of a cell door shuts against a black background and the word comes up on the screen: ‘Strangeways.’
Read the rest here:
http://www.ohdearism.com/2011/06/01/society-itv%E2%80%99s-strangeways/