Photo courtesy of Michael Mulcahy In this still from "Correction," Officer Maureen Santry waits for an inmate to complete paperwork as part of her impending release from prison. UA media arts professor Michael Mulcahy's interest in the prison system started when he read an article about the construction of a new prison in Arizona.

Murderers, drug dealers, child molesters and the occasional politician all wind up in prison.

Some stay for months, others for years and a few for life.

And then there are the men and women who come in for a few hours every day and get to go home - they aren't incarcerated, they are correctional officers.

Documentary filmmaker and UA media arts professor Michael Mulcahy explored the process of becoming one of these correctional officers in his new documentary, "Correction."

"It's a basic question. If we assume that prison's not a great place to be, then why would somebody work in a prison?" Mulcahy said. "That question got me started with how are these people trained? When I discovered the state had a training academy, I became much more interested in learning about what the state was going to teach them."

"Correction," which premieres Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Screening Room on 127 E. Congress St., has been consuming Mulcahy's life for the past four and a half years after he read an article in the newspaper that sparked his interest.

"Pima County and Cochise County were competing for a contact to build a new prison for the state," said Mulcahy, who directed, shot and edited a big chunk of the documentary. "I just thought that was an interesting idea, the notion of two municipalities fighting for the opportunity to build a prison."

While the contract was awarded soon after, his interest in the prison system was heightened and he thought of the idea for "Correction."

"I followed four officers through the (correctional officer training) academy and then followed them over their first nine months in the prison system," he said. "All those people have very different reasons for doing what they're doing and they all change over time."

These officers are the characters in "Correction," and Mulcahy wants the audience to do more than just watch them complete their training. He wants people to think about the many political issues that surround the training process and each lesson they learn in the academy.

"Part of the documentary tries to put these issues into a larger context and to look, for example, in the last 25 years Arizona's prison population has exploded," he said. "There's a significant shift in terms of money in the state that used to go to education, for example. A much lower percentage going to higher education and a much higher percentage going to correction."

While Mulcahy wants people to consider these issues, he wants people to figure out their own stances.

"I'm interested in getting people to think about something that they have probably not thought about and I'm interested in showing that within a certain context," he said. "I have no desire to try to tell people how to think, but I'm very interested in focusing a question. What does it mean to continue to send lots of people to prison over time? What does that say about us as a society? What does that say about our future?"

If you have answers to these questions, there will be a time and a place for discussion. Mulcahy said he plans to take his work around to several communities to generate similar results.

"I'm going to take it around Arizona to the major cities in Arizona that have prisons. There are 13 prisons in Arizona, situated around seven cities. I want to use this documentary as a point of focus and a catalyst for discussion with a range of different people representing these issues."

You will also be able to see "Correction" on television on Jan. 14, 2004, at 9 p.m. on KUAT, the local PBS affiliate. Mulcahy said it would also air nationally on the PBS network some time in 2004.

But that won't be the end to Mulcahy's work with the prison system.

"I will start work on a script in the next 18 months," he said. "There's a range of reality that I couldn't represent in the documentary, and I want to try and use fiction as a way to explore that."

"Correction" plays tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at The Screening Room. Admission is $5. A question and answer session with Mulcahy and one of the officers from the documentary will follow the screening.