Prisons are a sign of the failure of our society. Society fails in that it is unable to prevent the original crime; and then again, in locking up those criminals in a world of squalor, drug abuse, and violence, ruled, in effect, by the criminal hierarchy whose delicate co-operation with the authorities is necessary to maintain any semblance of order. 'Carandiru', based on the memoirs of a prison doctor in Brazil, is a fairly conventional prison movie, telling us the criminals' stories (as told to their medic) of life both outside and inside the bars; but it's still an absorbing tale, with moments of humanity flashing through the holes in a very grim backdrop: the ending feels like overkill until you learn the sobering statistics of the real event on which it was based. Of course, the poverty of Brazil undoubtedly contributed to the terrible nature of the (now demolished) Carandiru; but this week the British government triumphantly announced its plan to build four new mega-prisons, another story it's hard to see ending well.