During the initial years of the 2000s, I found myself lodged in the confines of Rikers Island, awaiting trial for a serious charge – murder. The forced group TV sessions, punctuated by cries of ‘Jer-ry! Jer-ry!’ and exclamations of ‘You are not the father’, formed a surreal backdrop. Upon my conviction in 2004, and subsequent sentencing of 28 years to life, television began to mark even larger sections of my day. Prisons are not alien to cable; the cost is covered through various means such as fundraisers and earnings from vending machines in the visiting room.
At Clinton Dannemora, a maximum-security prison located near the Canadian border, I procured a small 13-inch TV from the commissary. The freedom to choose my viewing content in the solitude of my cell, felt strangely empowering. After moving to Attica in 2007, the channel Oxygen was available to us, flaunting reality shows like ‘Bad Girls Club’. Events from ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Survivor’ were a source of entertainment.
Intrigued by the crafty plots laid out on these shows, I put up an ad on a prison dating website and mentioned ‘The Bachelor’ as a preferred show. This seemed to strike a chord with many women, one of whom I later took as my wife. Danielly, as she was named, had a fascination for true crime shows, which eventually led to her living in a constant state of paranoia. She even hung a bell at her front entrance as a precaution against break-ins.
During one of her visits, I noticed her uneasily scanning behind us, a result of recognizing a fellow inmate from an episode of ’20/20′. Similar instances have happened with me, identifying an inmate in the dining hall or yard from a clip of a true crime show. Recalling the recreated visuals of their crime scenes added a surreal layer to the everyday activities. Sing Sing was my next destination in 2016, where Oxygen had transitioned to a true crime focus.
The channel’s brand logo even changed to mimic crime scene tape, conveying its content’s essence. A string of shows like ‘Buried in the Backyard’ began to air continually. A brief transfer to a smaller prison in the Catskills, without in-cell TVs, provided a respite from the true crime obsession. However, upon my return to Sing Sing due to the Catskills facility’s closure, I found that true crime shows had entirely taken over the airwaves.
NBC’s American Crimes was frequently showing ‘Dateline’, ‘American Greed’, and ‘Lockup’. Seeing someone in prison watch a show providing an inside perspective on prison life was a peculiar experience. The loom of ‘Crime Stories With Nancy Grace’ on Merit TV and ‘Interview With a Killer’ marathons on Court TV added to this unusual phenomenon. A surging popularity of true crime genres was apparent, with more than half of Americans tuning in, as per a poll.
Television served as another instrument of immobilization in our prison cells, aligning with the purposes of confinement and punishment. Underpinning this, however, was a peculiar trend: a prison population, many guilty of heinous crimes, deriving entertainment value from real occurrences of murder, kidnapping, and theft. A few inmates watched these shows with the complex prison hierarchy working as a backdrop. One day in the fitness area, I posed a question to Cody Hernandez, or ‘Ceeboy’, about his viewing preferences.
Ceeboy revealed that his fiancée had introduced him to Oxygen’s thrilling shows. She had enrolled in a graduate course on forensic psychology, getting introduced to true crime shows due to Ceeboy’s imprisonment. Now, they pursued this shared interest together, with ‘Snapped’, a show detailing female culprits, as their joint favorite. They would synchronize their viewing time and held casual conversations over the phone as the episodes played out.
In contrast, I find solace on the Bravo network, where the serene ‘Below Deck’ offers glimpses of luxurious yachts and tropical vistas. The constructed narratives of ‘Summer House’ proved a temporary escape from the harsh reality of my incarceration. True crime, albeit a variant of reality TV, had a bleak tone as it involved engaging with dark and intense emotions.
Unlike traditional reality TV that induces feelings of competitiveness or desires for romance, true crime forces viewers to empathize with victims, despise their oppressors, and delve into tales of deceit, treachery, and murder. Outside the prison, viewers soaking up this explicit violence from the comfort of their homes feels paradoxical. Indeed, it makes one wonder if being bystanders to humanity’s sinister acts lends them a sense of reassurance, allowing them to consider their personal flaws, shames, and secrets as less troubling when framed against these dark stories.