EFP 66: Dr Jamie Bennett on the Prison Film and Mai Zetterling’s Scrubbers

This episode of the podcast explores prison films, with a special focus on Swedish filmmaker Mai Zetterling’s lesser-known drama Scrubbers from 1982.

Scrubbers stars Chrissie Cotterill as Annetta, a young mother serving a prison sentence at a female borstal. The film features many familiar faces, including Kathy Burke and Eva Mottley as Annetta’s fellow prisoners as well as Miriam Margoyles, Pam St Clement and Robbie Coltrane as prison staff.

Joining host Dr Pasquale Iannone to discuss Scrubbers and the prison film more generally is Dr Jamie Bennett. Jamie is Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology and an internationally-renowned scholar of media representations of prison. He has worked in prisons for three decades in a variety of senior positions and is currently group director for contracted prisons in HM Prison & Probation Service. Jamie has held the position of Governor at various prisons, including HMP Morton Hall in Lincolnshire which, at the time, was a women’s prison with a diverse international population.

Jamie’s recent publications include 2021’s Prisoners on Prison Films (co-authored with Victoria Knight) and Managing Prisons: Managerialism, Austerity and Moral Blindness (2024).

In a wide-ranging discussion, Jamie and Pasquale discuss the history of prison movies and TV shows - from 1930’s pre-code film The Big House to Alan Clarke’s controversial 1979 drama Scum to Jimmy McGovern’s recent BBC series Time (2021). They then look at Scrubbers in detail, exploring the film’s representation of life in a women’s prison. They draw on sources such as director Zetterling’s memoir and contemporary reviews of the film from the likes of Barbara Kruger.