A Look at Life Inside Emerald City


Have you ever wondered what prison life's life? HBO's first hour-long drama Oz shows you. Created by Tom Fontana & produced by Fontana & Barry Levinson, Oz takes a brutally honest look at life in Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary's Cell Block 5, an experimental unit called Emerald (or Em) City. This site will give background info on the prison, the staff, the inmates, the lingo, extra info, and legal info.



Warden Leo Glynn Oz is a maximum security prison that houses 1400 offenders, 78% of whom are men of color. It has 6 cell blocks. There's 1 officer (or hack) for every 9 prisoners. Oz is based on retribution; it's "hard times doing hard time."

There are 5 basic goals of a correctional facility: rehabilitation, retribution, isolation from society, vengeance, & punishment. At Oz, prisoners certainly get the last four. Em City tries to rehabilitate its inmates. Sometimes it doesn't quite do that.

Six percent of American prisoners are 55 or older. A 31-year-old inmate costs $21,000 per year; an elderly inmate costs three times that.


Now that you've been inside a while, please fill out the register. Once you've done that, please feel free to view the register.

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30 August 1998 by Loryn

A special thanks to to bobbronx@webtv.net for giving me the cast pictures used on this website!


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