Review/Television; 3 Women in a High-Security Prison

A case can be made that the three women celebrated in ''Through the Wire'' received excessive sentences - ranging from 35 to 58 years - for the crimes of which they were convicted and that they were subjected to undue punishment in the unusual prison to which they were consigned. That case has, in fact, been made with fitful success by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights. But tomorrow night's 90-minute documentary, which opens a new season of ''P.O.V.'' (whose title is short for ''Point of View''), works by independent producers, is dedicated less to exploration than to glorification. It can be seen tomorrow at 10 P.M. on Channel 13.

The three, once active members of what the authorities assert are terrorist organizations, spent almost two of their years of imprisonment, from 1986 to 1988, in a specially created High Security Unit at Lexington Federal Prison in Kentucky. That is the focus of Nina Rosenblum's documentary, which echoes the women's charges that the underground cells, with their bright white walls and sense of isolation, the constant surveillance and frequent strip searches, were custom made for America's political prisoners and fit the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.

In tell-us-how-noble-you-are interviews the women, Susan Rosenberg, Silvia Baraldini and Alejandrina Torres, present themselves as martyrs, and the producer eagerly accepts their self-estimate. The nature of the activities that brought them such harsh treatment is not very clearly spelled out. The effort here is to group them, in the program's catchall list, with ''members of the civil rights, antinuclear, antiwar, labor, Native American, black liberation and Puerto Rican independence movements and those engaged in the struggle for equality and social justice.'' The ingenuous viewer may be left with the impression that the three were not convicted for their connection with explosives or attempted prison breakouts or bank robberies or seditious conspiracy, but because they happened to be attending a rally in Central Park.

Prison officials, who have described the women as violent and dangerous offenders, come off as coldblooded types compared with Ms. Rosenberg's parents, who have been campaigning in their daughter's behalf and are given much time here to relate that she was always ''very sensitive about injustice'' and ''life loving.'' The prison, which one of the women calls ''a living tomb'' and another calls ''torture,'' is represented by frequent pictures of barbed wire accompanied by haunted-house music. (It must be noted that these tombs contain television sets; whether that is a mark of compassion or an added form of torture depends on one's opinion of television.) The political message of ''Through the Wire'' is so insistent that it may turn off viewers who might otherwise conclude that the heavy punishment meted out to the three had less to do with their actions than with their radical inclinations and associations. But indignation against the prosecution is undermined by the heavy breathing of the defense. The producer has succeeded in subverting her own work.

P.O.V. - THROUGH THE WIRE

Producer and director, Nina Rosenblum; Ms. Rosenblum, Angelo Corrao and Carlos Norman, co-writers; co-producer, Alexandra White; editor, Angelo Corrao; music by Nona Hendryx; executive producer of ''P.O.V.,'' Marc N. Weiss; produced in association with Channel Four-Great Britain and Third World Newsreel; a co-presentation of ''P.O.V.'' and WNET-New York; presented by KCET-Los Angeles, South Carolina ETV, WGBH-Boston and WNET-New York; Susan Sarandon, narrator. Tomorrow at 10 P.M. on Channels 13 and 49.

WITH: Susan Rosenberg, Alejandrina Torres and Sylvia Baraldini.