In January 1999, Cathy Crane and I started research in the US for a film with the working title GEFÄNGNISBILDER (PRISON IMAGES). We were looking for footage from security cameras installed in penitentiaries, instruction material for prison officers, documentaries, and feature films, which included depictions of prisons.We got to know a private investigator who, as a civil rights activist, campaigns for the families of prisoners killed in Californian prisons: a private detective who reads Hans Blumenberg when he has time to kill. An architect showed us the plans for a new penitentiary for ‘sex offenders’ in Oregon; one-third of the planned buildings – those intended for therapeutic services – had been crossed out from the plans because the legislature refused to fund them. In Camden, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, a guard showed me around the prison; the men gave me disdainful, sidelong glances from behind glass similar to that in the lion house of a zoo. I saw women brushing each other's hair like women in a Pasolini film. The guard told me that there were vents in the ceilings of the day rooms through which tear gas could be introduced, but that this had never been done as the chemicals deteriorated over time.

Pictures from the maximum security prison in Corcoran, California: Asurveillance camera shows a pie-shaped segment of the concrete yard where the prisoners, dressed in shorts and mostly shirtless, are allowed to spend half an hour a day. One prisoner attacks another, whereupon those not involved lay flat on the ground, arms over their heads. They know that when a fight breaks out, the guard will call out a warning and then fire once using a rubber bullet. If the prisoners continue fighting, the guard will use live ammunition. The pictures are silent, and the shot is only revealed in the trail of gun smoke drifting across the screen. The camera and the gun are right next to each other; field of vision and field of fire merge. The reason that the yard was built in pie segments is clear – so that there is nowhere to hide from observation or bullets. One of the prisoners – usually the attacker – collapses. In many cases he is either seriously wounded or dead. The prisoners belong to prison gangs with names like ‘Aryan Brotherhood’ or ‘Mexican Mafia’.