Most Americans' images of prison life have probably been shaped by Hollywood, from James Cagney's White Heat to Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz. TIME's Special Section this week sets out to capture the raw reality of both prison life and the people subjected to it. To this end, Staff Photographer Neil Leifer took his cameras over a period of a year to six state prisons, including one for women, and a federal penitentiary. He returned with an extraordinary collection of several thousand photographs.

The editors chose to publish 35 from Leifer's portfolio, the largest photo essay by a single photographer ever to run in TIME. All, except for the cover portrait of Attica Inmate Richard Eder, were black-and-white shots. Says Leifer: "Prison is a very, very boring existence for convicts. We sought an honest look." One of his most vivid portraits is of Charles Manson, convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders of 1969, who was photographed for the first time in his cell. At the start, Manson, whose drug-using, commune-organizing, desert-dwelling '60s life-style once made him America's most prominent disturbed person, was leery and unwilling. But during a second visit with Manson, Leifer managed to allay Manson's fears. In the competitive world of photojournalism, Leifer has always played to a tough audience, including Abraham Leifer, his father, who built the first darkroom that his son used, and who died last week at the age of 70. But on a trip to Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, Leifer met someone who had been evaluating his work almost as intensely as his father: Richard Eder, who is serving from 7 1/2 to 15 years. A picture taken by a bank camera during a New York City robbery led to his arrest and conviction. Said Eder: "I've been looking at his pictures all year. Let me tell you how good this Neil Leifer is. The only camera in America better than Neil Leifer's is at Citibank." Leifer photographed Eder by mounting his Nikon with a 16-mm fisheye lens on the ceiling right over the middle of the cell, then using a remote-controlled infra-red signal to snap the shutter in order to keep himself out of the picture.

TIME Staff Writer Kurt Andersen wrote the main story after visiting most of the same institutions Leifer had photographed. Says Andersen, "I have never encountered an issue about which there is so much basic agreement on what is wrong and on what ought to be done." He had the expert help of Reporter-Researcher Alain Sanders, who has a degree from Columbia University Law School. Sanders saw his assignment as a "welcome chance to go beyond the minutiae of law and to see how the legal system affects people at its point of greatest impact."

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