By JODI SOKOLOWSKI
Buffalo Law Journal

When a person is convicted of a crime and sent to prison, that may be the last time free citizens hear about them.

"The public will wash their hands of it," said Attica Correctional Facility Superintendent James Conway.

Correctional officers, civil staff such as physicians and locksmiths, and volunteers from church groups or support networks together make up a society within correctional facilities.

The issues that inmates, as well as staff who serve them, face are often veiled behind the curtain of fences and barbed wire.

But a documentary produced through the University at Buffalo Law School's Projecting Law project provides a glimpse into those lives behind bars.

"Encountering Attica," expected to be completed in September, started out as an orientation film for first-year law students who visit area correctional facilities. A UB Law class specializing in criminal punishment, taught by professor Teresa Miller, involves field trips to the Attica Correctional Facility, where students teach inmates about legal research and writing.

But Miller realized that while classroom discussions and site visits exposed the students to the prison system, that conversation was limited to the prison campus.

"It's doesn't translate to the public," Miller said. "What you see in the media is very different than what you see in facilities day in and day out."

The documentary will feature profiles of five inmates - four of whom are serving life sentences - who have "resolved with the fact that they'll be here for 25 years or more," Conway said. They are doing the "necessary things" to do well within the prison system, such as getting a job and an education and steering clear of disciplinary measures.

"They're probably some of the better inmates. Not that they did minor crimes, but they assimilated into the prison system," Conway said. "They talk about their families and how (their incarceration) has an impact on their home lives. They tell emotional stories."

The inmates featured in the film were selected based on their participation in A Look for Alternatives, a program to aid youth "on the wrong track," and the Community Awareness Program, through which high school students and others tour prison facilities.

"They're very open and honest about how they got here," Conway said of the prisoners in the film.

Tim Gera, a UB graduate student in media study and the documentary's videographer, said the "only opportunities when an inmate looks good" happen in films such as "Shawshank Redemption," which starred Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins.

"At some level, (the documentary) shows a human interaction that takes place beyond the sensational atmosphere that's around incarceration, and (seeks) to change the notion of who's behind those walls. They're human beings, not animals," he said.

Nathan Short, a first-year UB Law student, said the experience of visiting Attica "exhausted my emotional capacity."

"Over the course of a few hours, I was bombarded with the reality of sitting across from a number of individuals who were responsible for some heinous crimes. I found that the weight of the reality weighed on me for days after the trip," he said.

The visits are also designed to let students see how the system affects the lives of the convicts and their families as well as the staff, who bring stresses home to their own families. Staff are exposed to violence and disease, and face a shorter life span than the general populace - the average life expectancy for a correctional officer is 58 years, Miller said.

"Everyone is doing time, from the correction officers to their families," she said. "We're exposing more people to a harsher and dysfunctional system.

"The long-term goal of this project and future projects is to be the impetus for prison reform at the legislative level," Miller said.

A planned documentary project next semester will look behind the walls of Albion Correctional Facility, an Orleans County women's prison.