The Jericho Mile is a 1979 Emmy Award-winning American made for TV crime sports film, directed by Michael Mann.

Murphy beats them and ultimately allows the track coach to train him in anticipation of the upcoming Olympic trials.

Before that can happen however, a new track has to be built to proper specs in the yard for Murphy to run on so he can register an official time to be eligible to compete at the Olympic trials.

Stiles manages to swing a deal with the head of the white gang, Dr. D, (Brian Dennehy), to get a conjugal visit with his wife three months early so he can see his new baby.

As the story continues, the truth unfolds and a gang fight ensues as the blacks and the Hispanics challenge the validity of the picket line.

The track is built and Murphy clocks a qualifying time while beating Frank Davies (considered to be one of the fastest milers in the U.S.) to be able to compete in the Olympic trials.

As he crosses the finish line, a group of inmates are waiting with huge anticipation as to how Murphy did.

According to Peter Strauss, Nolan was "an English professor" at Villanova University and the story "sat on the shelf until I expressed a desire to ABC to do something totally contrary to what I had played in previous roles.

[3] Michael Mann had been hired by Dustin Hoffman to do a rewrite on the film Straight Time (1978).

All the guards looked like — there used to be these ads in the back of magazines for Charles Atlas: "You can build up your body if you buy this elastic rubber band thing."

[They] found any way they could of expressing their individuality in terms of wearing shorts or basically a lot of hip-hop wardrobe was observable in the early '70s in prison systems.

[4]Mann became fascinated by life inside the prison, which was he says was run by three gangs: the Black Guerrilla Family, Bluebirds (later the Aryan Brotherhood) and the Mexican Mafia.

And that was very poignant, and that became the idea for the character Stiles [played by Richard Lawson], who gets killed part of the way through, that he didn’t have Playboy centerfolds in his cell.

So through Eddie Bunker, I was able to talk to people who ran M.A., the Black Guerrilla Family and also the Hells Angels.

[4]Among the cast was a former convict turned playwright called Miguel Pinero, who Mann says was popular with the inmates.

"Prisoners would bring him glasses of water with a napkin wrapped around it, so his fingers didn’t get wet—these small gestures of respect were their form of courtesy.

It's a study of a human being who is at the lowest point of our social structure... to care about him... to find ways to create in him hope and expectation.

[11][12] Research on the project led to material that resulted in Mann's theatrical debut feature Thief.