Writer/director Jamaa Fanaka was still a student at UCLA when he made this film. The prison yard scenes were shot at the UCLA cinema department quadrangle.
Floyd 'Wildcat' Chatman was a last-minute replacement for an actor who quit the day before shooting began.
The fight in the jail cell between Badja Djola and Leon Isaac Kennedy took three days to film. Neither Djola nor Kennedy used stunt doubles.
The extras used in this movie weren't trained professional extras.