Brubaker (1980) HD

Henry Brubaker is a reformist criminologist and former army captain who is given the task of managing the Wakefield Penitentiary in Arkansas, where there are no prison guards and where internal order is maintained by so-called "reliable" inmates. In order to understand the real problems of the institution, the man enters the prison by pretending, for a few days, to be an inmate himself and thus discovering the dramatic conditions in which the prisoners find themselves: physical and psychological violence, constant abuse, exploitation to which they are constantly subjected by the city's merchants and, not infrequently, death.
Once his identity is revealed, he begins an action of radical change in life inside the prison, trying to eliminate injustices and clashing with the corrupt members of the committee for the management of the penitentiary. In his work, the new director is supported by Lillian, the woman who wanted him to lead Wakefield, but her support wanes when the clash with bureaucracy and especially with politics emerges in all its evidence when Brubaker refuses to stop the excavations in a field where prisoners murdered inside the prison have been buried.
Dickie, a prisoner from the reliable group, is initially skeptical of the new director, but slowly realizes the value of his work, to the point of paying him full tribute when he, just removed from his position, prepares to leave the penitentiary.