My Six Convicts (1952)

The new state government is embarking on a program of prison reform, one of the measures to appoint a psychologist at Harbor State Prison on a 6-month probation period to ascertain prisoners' mental acuity, including skill aptitude, not only to make them more productive members of prison society, but also to prepare them for a straight life once outside the prison walls. The outcome of this trial will dictate whether this specific project will continue and if it will be expanded to other prisons. The appointee, hereafter referred to as Doc, is an academic inexperienced at working with prisoners, and as such walks into the situation a bit naive. Despite the Warden's best guess that the trial is doomed to failure as the prisoners will never trust him or the process in only seeing him and it as a means to gather information to use against them--being a so-called stoolie--Doc is determined to uphold the project's purpose, which requires confidentiality in whatever prisoners may divulge in the process. Doc is dismayed to learn that he has no trained staff and must recruit staff from the prison population--actually, prisoners will "choose" if they want to work for him. Doc learns that first he must gain the go-ahead of Punch Pinero, a known murderer who was convicted on a lesser charge of tax fraud, controlling much of the prison population and using violence as a means of control. Over the course of months, six convicts volunteer for the work assignment, all on their own personal motive, some nefarious. In terms of severity of their crimes, they range from an alcoholic who took the fall for "a dame", to a murderer, a psychopath who killed and will kill for the sheer enjoyment of the act. Doc's unofficial de facto second in charge ends up being James T. Connie, a safe-cracker who has learned to manipulate the system to his benefit and who is sometimes a little too smart for his own good. Doc not only has the issue of gaining their trust and thus their loyalty and by association they acting as trusted liaisons to the rest of the prison population, he has to manage the disparate personalities among the six, again some who have less than noble reasons for wanting to work for him--reasons which could place his life at risk.