TV REVIEW : HBO’s ‘Lock-Up’ Probes N.Y. Prison Life

Nina Rosenblum and Jon Alpert’s HBO documentary on New York City’s largest prison, “Lock-Up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island,” is sometimes as hopped up as some of the Rikers inmates, and shot in a style best summed up as videocam-with-an-attitude. It’s not always clear where the exploration of the vast facility is going, and it’s even less clear for whom it’s intended.

On one hand, Rosenblum and Alpert indicate that they want kids to see their look behind bars: They end this 75-minute work with a repeat offender lecturing--through the camera and to young viewers--about staying out of trouble. It’s a message that echoes “Scared Straight.”

On the other hand, “Lock-Up” is definitely not for younger viewers. True to the freer-than-thou HBO tradition, the report’s nudity and profanity would qualify it for an R rating, and, in any case, young kids might not understand the legal and institutional processes depicted.

Teens, though, can probably handle this attempt at a panoramic view of an obviously failing penal institution, where prisoners are being recycled through the system at an alarming rate. As we come to know certain inmates, such as HIV-positive and drug-addicted Jimmy Mirabel or Jackie, also addicted and nine months pregnant, we have to wonder how this place can possibly help them.

And when Jimmy is ultimately denied a request to transfer to a drug treatment clinic, it shocks us for a moment--until the judge explains his ruling on the grounds that Jimmy has five prior convictions. Without context, Jimmy and others look like victims of the system, and “Lock-Up” often deliberately eliminates the context. It amounts to a deception of the viewer, which is especially inexcusable in a work purporting to give us the “inside truth” of the prison system. The system needs deep reform, but “Lock-Up” isn’t the vehicle for promoting it.

* “Lock-Up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island” airs at 10:15 tonight on HBO, with repeats on June 9, 12, 22 and 28.