[Mashiro]

Murder in the First / 1995 / USA / 7.3 out of 10 Rating on IMDb

An eager and idealistic young attorney defends an Alcatraz prisoner accused of murdering a fellow inmate. The extenuating circumstances: his client had just spent over three years in solitary confinement. Henri Young stole five dollars from a post office and ended up going to prison - to the most famous, or infamous, prison of them all: Alcatraz. He tried to escape, failed, and spent three years and two months in solitary confinement - in a dungeon, with no light, no heat and no toilet. Milton Glenn, the assistant warden, who was given free reign by his duty-shirking superior, was responsible for Young's treatment. Glenn even took a straight razor and hobbled Young for life. After three years and two months, Young was taken out of solitary confinement and put with the rest of the prisoners. Almost immediately, Young took a spoon and stabbed a fellow prisoner in the neck, killing him. Now, Young is on trial for murder, and if he's convicted he'll go to the gas chamber. An eager and idealistic young attorney, James Stamphill, is given this impossible case, and argues before a shocked courtroom that Young had a co-conspirator. The true murderer, he says, was Alcatraz.

A great movie in my opinion. A really good story and cast with Kevin Bacon and Christian Slater.

This is a classic movie about the injustice in U.S. jails. The main place here is the infamous and well known jail Alcatraz that is located on an island near San Francisco.

Who is the victim? Henri Young, basically still a child, was jailed for stealing 5 USD from a store that was also a post office at that time. He was transfered to Alcatraz for such a minor offence. In there he was abused and treated like a animal and extreme criminal. To quote the movie "They locked him up. They crushed his spirit. ". He has become crazy.

Although the movie says it is based on real events it actually isn't. The events and how the inmate is shown and described are fictional. There was indeed a real Henry Young in Alcatraz but he was a convicted bank robber and murder hence why he was sent to Alcatraz.

More about it here: https://www.alcatrazhistory.com/hyoung.htm

However in general the movie greatly shows of how U.S. jail still work til today. Inmates are treated like animals and locked away without any sign of humanity. And you wonder why they are so crazy inside and afterwards. The U.S. jail and justice system IS MADE to crush you and not to actually defend you or even remotely attempt to resocialize you into society. You are indeed guilty until proven otherwise instead of not guilty instead of proven guilty.

There are however, world wide, quite a number of justice and jail systems even worse than in the U.S. Thinking about Chile, Columbia and etc.