Societal Representations of the Prison and Comics: The Case of Arkas' The Lifer (From Images of Crime: Representations of Crime and the Criminal in Science, the Arts and the Media, P 263-287, 2001, Hans-Jorg Albrecht, Afroditi Koukoutsaki, et al, eds. -- See NCJ-192094)

• NCJ Number: 192102
• Author(s): Afroditi Koukoutsaki
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 25 pages
• Sale Source: Max-Planck-Institute Fur Auslandisches und Internationales Strafrecht
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Case Study
• Language: English
• Country: Germany (Unified)

Annotation

This article analyzes social representations of the prison.

Abstract

"The Lifer" is the only Greek series of comic strips that takes place entirely in prison. The article describes the work as an ingenious comment on the improvement-resocialization model on which contemporary correctional codes are based. The humor is not simply a mere mockery of the correctional community and the condition of the prison, but is about the quintessence of the correctional ideal, the ideology of treatment. "The Lifer" has the ability to publicize messages, systems of values, and attitudes to a wide audience. However, the ideological content which it publicizes not only does not represent the dominant ideologies about penalty and criminals, but, on the contrary, undermines their very foundations. If one considers the prison as the ultimate stage of a process of social exclusion, the "image" of the quarantine does not indicate the distancing of prison from society, but the irrevocable character of the exclusion. Notes, figures references