A Case for the Arts

Many tax-paying citizens often question why prisoners should benefit from arts programming, given the fact that many members of the community do not receive opportunities to create or appreciate the arts.  While various studies have supported the positive impact that education can have on recidivism rates, the statistical research on the influence of the arts has been more limited.  Improved education and vocational skills, as well as assistance with job placement and housing upon release, help to reduce the likelihood of a former offender returning to prison.  Participants in prison education, vocation and work programs have recidivism rates 20 to 60 percent lower than those of non-participants.  Another recent study found that participants in education programs were 29 percent less likely to return to prison and generally earned higher wages upon release.1

The arts should be regarded as a gateway to further edification, scholarship and exploration.  Often, incarcerated juveniles and adults have been disenchanted with formal education.  As a result of learning disabilities, familial difficulties and other challenges to their physical and mental wellbeing, many of these individuals struggled in school and could not relate it to their lives. Various approaches are necessary in order to engage people who have been turned off of education by the formal system.  This initial engagement and subsequent interest in additional learning can often develop through the arts, as prisoners realize their creative power when they see their poem typed in a chapbook or their painting hanging on the wall.  In many ways, the process of creating and sharing the arts is therapeutic, empowering and transformative.  These qualities of the artistic experience ring especially true in a prison, jail or juvenile detention center.

A few studies have attempted to quantify these qualitative descriptions of the value of the arts for incarcerated individuals.  For instance, the often-cited 1983 Brewster Report, written by California State University San Jose sociology professor Dr. Lawrence Brewster, reviewed four institutions, showing that California’s Arts-in-Corrections program produced $228,522 in measurable benefits as compared with a cost to the department of $135,885.  Among inmates who participated in the arts programs, Brewster found a 75 to 81 percent reduction of incident rates.2  The validity of this report has been questioned, yet it is one of the few quantitative reports supporting the practice of the arts in correctional facilities.  The positive benefits of the arts in terms of recidivism rates have also been noted in both formal studies and anecdotal accounts.  From December 1980 to February 1987, the California Department of Corrections studied parole outcomes for 177 randomly selected inmates who had participated in at least one arts-in-corrections class per week for a minimum of six months.  Arts-in-Corrections participants had a higher percentage of favorable outcomes than the total population studied for the same periods.3  It is impossible to claim that only the arts programs were responsible for the reduction in incident rates and recidivism.  Other factors, including who chooses to participate in arts programs, their education levels, job training, and family support, also influence these statistics.            

In my research interviews, artists working in correctional facilities mentioned the low recidivism rates of their students based on informal observations.  Leslie Neal of ArtSpring Inc. in Florida has tracked thirty women who participated in the InsideOut program and have been released back into the community on parole.  Of those women, only one was returned to prison and has since been re-released to become a “productive” member of society.  The director of Shakespeare Behind Bars in Kentucky, Curt Tofteland, cited no recidivism among the thirty program participants who have been released.  Similarly, Katherine Vockins, the director of Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, has kept track of twelve ex-participants living in the New York City area.  Of those men, ten are leading what Vockins describes as “perfectly healthy and problem-free lives.”  While these artists acknowledge that other factors impact recidivism rates, they suggested that their arts programs could have contributed to the reduced recidivism among their former students.  Based on statistical studies and anecdotal reports, it is difficult to refute the value of the arts for incarcerated men, women and children.

An even stronger voice of support for these art programs comes from the prisoners who have participated in them.  In his memoir A Place to Stand, the now renowned poet Jimmy Santiago Baca describes his path from illiteracy to poetry and self-discovery during his incarceration in an Arizona state prison.  One of his early poems, titled “It Started,” highlights the importance of writing for him and other incarcerated men:

While Baca illustrates the value of the writing program, he spent his imprisonment in isolation and could not participate in the workshops.  Richard Shelton, who has facilitated poetry workshops in Arizona state prisons for over thirty years, told me that he responded to Baca’s letters and writings with written criticism.  Even though Baca never participated in Shelton’s workshops, he recognized Shelton as a friend and a mentor.

Spoon Jackson, a prisoner serving a life-without-the-possibility-of-parole sentence in California, also expresses the value of words, poetry and workshops in his process of “self-rehabilitation.”  While imprisoned in San Quentin in the 1980s, Jackson studied poetry with Judith Tannenbaum, played the role of Pozzo in Jan Jonson’s 1988 production of Waiting for Godot, participated in basic education and college-level courses, and discovered the power of words.  As he explained in a recent editorial published in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Words would be what self-rehabilitated me and my thinking.  I learned a few new words each day, and each new word brought forth a geyser erupting inside my mind and soul. The more words I read, studied and pondered, the clearer life became. I became richer and deeper inside. I could see, taste, feel and touch the growth taking shape inside me, and understood things I had never understood before.” Jackson further suggests that:

Both Baca and Jackson acknowledge the mesmerizing power of language and literature for the discovery, transformation and “rehabilitation” of oneself, while also recognizing the contribution of writing workshops and other prison programs to this process of change and growth.