The lusty pleasures they show to prison inmates

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 17

The lusty pleasures they show to prison inmates

By

MIKE ROYKO

Chicago “Sun-Times”

The prison employee was more than a little upset. “I don’t want you to use my name because my job would be on the line, but something just happened here that is blowing my mind.” "Here,” in this case, is the Pontiac (Illinois) State Prison, home to more than 2000 convicted criminals. “They have movies here for the inmates. And do you know what movie they just showed them? A porn movie. It’s called ‘Seka’s Pleasure.’ “I mean, this is hard-core. It must be a triple-X. I never saw a porn movie before, but I’ll tell you, this thing is raunchy. “They showed it on closed-circuit TV so they could watch it in their cells. “Can you imagine that? You got all these guys penned up in cells, and a lot of them don't have all their marbles or they wouldn’t be here in the first place, and they show them pornography? “Don’t ask me why they did it. I’m not important enough to be asking my superiors questions. But for whatever reason, they did it. “Its unbelievable. About 20 or 30 per cent of the prisoners are here for sex offences — rape, deviate sexual assault, or indecent liberties. “And .they're the ones who can’t stop talking about it. The movie was shown on Saturday. All day Sunday and Monday, whenever any of these guys got anywhere near a female employee, they’d start call-

ing them ‘Seka’ — that’s the name of the woman in the movie — and saying lewd things. “Maybe it’s somebody’s idea of rehabilitation, but if it is, they’re nuts. Seeing these films could be very frustrating for them. It doesn’t do an 18-year-old inmate any good to be seeing this kind of stuff when he’s got 20 or 30 years in here ahead of him. ‘“Besides, tax dollars shouldn’t be spent on this kind of thing.” Any idea what the plot was? “The plot? What plot? Those things don’t have plots.” Sure they do. Not a heavy plot, true, but there’s ushally something to link the action together. “Well, if this had a plot, I missed it. There was just a lot 0f... well, you know. A lot of linking.” I’m not familiar with the story of “Seka’s Pleasure,” but we can assume that it is like most of the films of this — as the critics would say — this genre. So it’s not a question of what they do — but simply who they do it with and how often. We contacted the Pontiac prison’s administrative office to ask why they had shown Seka in the pursuit of her lusty pleasures. This surprising explanation was provided by Dorothea Green, who works for the warden. “It was a mistake,” she said.

A mistake? How does one mistakenly show 90 minutes of Ms Seka, engaging in various strenuous, sexual activities, to 2000 bug-eyed prison inmates? “This was the first week-end for the closed-circuit film. In the past, we’ve shown the films in the chapel but now we also have them on closed-circuit TV. “I guess things weren’t that well organised. Apparently somebody in the Leisure Time Activities Division here went to Springfield to get the film from the distributor and picked up the wrong one.” That is one of the taller stories I’ve heard in a while. If you have ever been in a video rental shop, and have looked over their supply, you know that it’s virtually impossible to mistake a porn tape for anything but a porn tape. I mean, when the jacket shows some Swedish tart leering at you, with her bosom hanging out of her nightie, you would immediately suspect that this ain’t the story of Bambi. And all you have to do is read the tape jacket. In another Ms Seka film — called “Inside Seka” — it says: “The feature begins as Seka prepares to make love with her husband. During the act of love, she whispers her previous sexual encounters to her husband. Each time she begins to tell one, we

flash back to the actual happening... ” Now, even someone from the Leisure Time Activities Division would have to figure out that this ain’t the story line of “On Golden Pond.” But if you were dense enough to overlook that, a few minutes of screening would give you some idea of what it was about. “It wasn’t screened,” said Ms Green. “There wasn’t time.” No time in a state prison? Why? What was the great rush? Were the inmates all going to a cocktail party? Ms Green said she is not sure how long it took before the prison employees became aware that the prisoners were being shown a porno film. “I assume that it took a while,” she said, “so the whole film was probably shown.” That brought this response from the other prison employee, whom I quoted earlier: “Took a while? For Pete’s sake, the place started sounding like a zoo. There was hooting and hollering and all kinds of screaming and shouting. You’d have to be an idiot or stone dead not to know that something unusual was going on.” Ms Green said that this will be the last time a porno film is shown at Pontiac. The film, incidentally, was shown over the prison’s educational channel. Well, maybe the inmates did learn something. Like what they might be missing.