VH1 in the US has been criticised for a new documentary called Music Behind Bars which tracks the lives and ambitions of a prison band. Billed by its producer Arnold Shapiro as "an unglamorous look at life in the clink and the power of music as a means of rehabilitation", families of some of the victims of one band's members are not impressed.
Episode one features a heavy metal band at Pennsylvania's Graterford State Corrections Facility. Mary Orlando, whose daughter was shot by Christopher Bissey, one of the band's members, told local paper the Philadelphia Inquirer: "I couldn't believe it, it was like slapping me in the face. Watching Bissey prance around with other band members on prime-time was sickening - especially given my daughter loved music and dreamed of one day becoming a dancer."
Mary Rappaport of the National Center for Victims of Crimes added her disgust: "If this makes celebrities out of offenders, it's detrimental to society and particularly painful and insensitive to victims. The reason VH1 put this on is because of the prison setting and I think that's what has to be looked at." After protests by victims' families, Pennsylvania's House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution calling on VH1 to donate profits from Music Behind Bars to the state's Office of the Victim Advocate.
VH1 are yet to comment on the programme, though the prison's deputy warden David DiGuglielmo has spoken out in favour of the band itself. "Not giving inmates things to do is dangerous. They need ways to occupy their time. Some of the inmates - before they got into music - were difficult people."