Plot
Father Joe Collins is a kindly but realistic prison chaplain who tries to bring some humanity behind the grim walls of a major penitentiary. One of his success stories is "Dad" Schultz, a kindly convict who was released after 20 years but found the outside world so overwhelming that he had a nervous breakdown. Father Collins convinces the prison officials to take him back as a civilian employee/gardener, so he will "feel at home".
Father Collins also takes an interest in Johnny Davis, an educated inmate who received an overly stiff sentence for forging a $10.00 check. Hardened lifer Red Manson does his best to lessen the influence of Father Collins among the inmates, while planning a mass breakout.
When the break begins, Davis wildly fires a rifle to keep Father Collins from being taken hostage. The distraction enables the guards to regain control of the prison.
His actions gain Davis an early release, meanwhile Manson, who killed two guards during the riot, is headed for death row.
The Green Mile is a 1996 serial novel by American writer Stephen King. It tells the story of death row supervisor Paul Edgecombe's encounter with John Coffey, an unusual inmate who displays inexplicable healing and empathetic abilities. The serial novel was originally released in six volumes before being republished as a single-volume work. The book is an example of magical realism.
Folsom State Prison (FSP) is a California State Prison in Folsom, California, U.S., approximately 20 mi (30 km) northeast of the state capital of Sacramento. It is one of 34 adult institutions operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Leslie Louise Van Houten is an American convicted murderer and former member of the Manson Family. During her time with Manson's group, she was known by various aliases such as Louella Alexandria, Leslie Marie Sankston, Linda Sue Owens and Lulu. Van Houten was arrested and charged in relation to the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. She was convicted and sentenced to death. However, the California Supreme Court decision on People v. Anderson then ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, resulting in her sentence being commuted to life in prison. Her conviction was then overturned in a 1976 appellate court decision which granted her a retrial. Her second trial ended with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. At her third trial in 1978, she was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of conspiracy and sentenced to seven years to life in prison.
California Men's Colony (CMC) is a male-only state prison located northwest of the city of San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo County, California, along the central California coast approximately halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
California State Prison, Corcoran (COR) is a male-only state prison located in the city of Corcoran, in Kings County, California. It is also known as Corcoran State Prison, CSP-C, CSP-COR, CSP-Corcoran, and Corcoran I. The facility is just north of the newer California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran.
Brute Force is a 1947 American crime film noir directed by Jules Dassin, from a screenplay by Richard Brooks with cinematography by William H. Daniels. It stars Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford,and Yvonne De Carlo.
California Medical Facility (CMF) is a male-only state prison medical facility located in the city of Vacaville, Solano County, California. It is older than California State Prison, Solano, the other state prison in Vacaville.
Pontiac Correctional Center, established in June 1871, is an Illinois Department of Corrections maximum security prison for adult males in Pontiac, Illinois. The prison also has a medium security unit that houses medium to minimum security inmates and is classified as Level 3. Until the 2011 abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, the prison housed male death row inmates, but had no execution chamber. Inmates were executed at the Tamms Correctional Center. Although the capacity of the prison is 2172, it has an average daily population of approximately 2000 inmates.
Stateville Correctional Center (SCC) is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, United States, near Chicago. It is a part of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
The United States Penitentiary, Florence High is a high-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Colorado. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. USP Florence High is part of the Federal Correctional Complex, Florence, which is situated on 49 acres (20 ha) of land and houses different facilities with varying degrees of security. It is named "Florence High" in order to differentiate it from the United States Penitentiary, Florence ADMAX, the federal supermax prison located in the same complex.
Not About Nightingales is a three-act play by Tennessee Williams in 1938. He wrote the play late in 1938, after reading in a newspaper about striking inmates of a Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, prison in August 1938, who had been placed in "an isolation unit lined with radiators, where four died from temperatures approaching 150 degrees.".
The Big Doll House is a 1971 American women-in-prison film starring Pam Grier, Judy Brown, Roberta Collins, Brooke Mills, and Pat Woodell. The film follows six female inmates through daily life in a gritty, unidentified tropical prison. Later the same year, the film Women in Cages featured a similar story and setting and much the same cast, and was shot in the same abandoned prison buildings. A nonsequel follow-up, titled The Big Bird Cage, was released in 1972.
San Quentin is a 1937 Warner Bros. drama film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, and Ann Sheridan. It was shot on location at San Quentin State Prison.
The San Quentin Six were six inmates at San Quentin State Prison in the U.S. state of California who were charged with actions related to an August 21, 1971 escape attempt that resulted in six deaths and at least two persons seriously wounded. They were Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo Pinell, Johnny Larry Spain, Willie Tate, and Luis Talamantez. The dead included George Jackson, a co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family; two other inmates, and three guards.
James Franklin "Frank" Sawyer was an American Depression-era bank robber and prison escapee. An associate of Jim Clark, Ed Davis and other fellow Oklahoma bandits, he was a participant in countless bank robberies throughout Kansas and Oklahoma between 1917 and 1933. He was wrongfully imprisoned for a 1932 bank robbery in Fort Scott, Kansas and spent almost 40 years in prison before he was pardoned by Governor Robert Docking in 1969.
You Can't Beat the Law is a 1943 American drama film directed by Phil Rosen; also known as Prison Mutiny.
Steven Dennis "Clem" Grogan is an American convicted murderer and former member of the Manson Family. He was released from prison in 1985, the only person paroled after being convicted of murder in the killings committed by the Family.
The Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, United States was the target of two related domestic terrorist attacks in 1970, tied to escalating racial tensions in the state's criminal justice system. On August 7, 17-year-old Jonathan P. Jackson attempted to coerce the release of the Soledad Brothers by kidnapping Superior Court judge Harold Haley from the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California. As the kidnappers attempted to leave with five hostages by car, one of them fired at police, causing a shootout that left four people dead, including Jonathan Jackson. Judge Haley, who had a shotgun taped to his neck, was also killed. Three others were wounded. The event received intense media coverage, as did the subsequent manhunt and trial of Angela Davis, an ousted professor from UCLA with connections to George and Jonathan Jackson, and the Black Panthers. Davis owned the weapons used in the incident but stated that she had no knowledge of its happening. On October 8 of that year, the Weathermen detonated explosives in support of the earlier incident.
Philip C. Kaufman is an American record producer, tour manager, and author. He has been referred to as one of the most infamous tour managers in music history. Kaufman worked with Gram Parsons, The Rolling Stones, Emmylou Harris, Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa, Hank Williams III, Etta James, among others.
