TV: Louis Theroux Behind Bars

Louis Theroux visits the infamous San Quentin prison, in this documentary shown about two weeks ago on BBC Two. It's a hard place, full to bursting with something like 3000 murderers, rapists, paedophiles, other serious criminals, and plenty of relatively minor ones too. The segregate themselves into gangs, often along race lines; many are in 23-hours-a-day total confinement; attacks on other inmates and guards seem to be rife... and yet there is a bizarrely genial, almost co-conspiratorial, relationship between the wardens and inmates.

I've never watched a Theroux documentary before, despite some of the interesting topics he's covered -- at first I just thought he was into pointlessly weird things, so ignored him, and then even as the areas he was investigating become more interesting the scheduling was quite poor (i.e. it clashed with something better). His style is not hard-hitting or furiously investigative -- to be honest, who can blame him not wanting to push these men with hard questions? Instead he seems to have a series of pleasant conversations with a variety of prisoners and wardens, but in the process learns a lot about what it's like to live in San Quentin.

This isn't a technical exercise in how the prison works -- there are a few details about solitary confinement, the amount of yard time they get, how meals work, etc, but these are the bare minimum, almost window dressing, around the stories of the people. Nor does it really delve into the issues of why these people are here, if they deserve their punishments, and why it is so many of them come back within months, if not weeks. Instead Theroux is more interested in 'prison society' -- how the gangs function, how new inmates survive, what happens to those who drop out of gangs, how relationships can flourish and how they're treated. Through his gentle probing, a surprising amount of information is revealed.

Yet there's always a sense that he hasn't quite got to the heart of things. When gang members and guards appear to speak candidly about the inter-inmate violence, the racism-that-isn't-(honest) between gangs, or various other potentially shocking facts of prison life, there's a feeling that there's something more, just beyond that -- something that they won't, or can't, talk about. I'd wager no documentarian could get at the stuff. Theroux succeeds in getting closer than most.