Sixty-five per cent of those on custodial sentences and 51% of those on community sentences re-offend within two years, but Bridget Edwards contends that the arts can help prisoners reform and move on.
Former prisoner Erwin James often talks about the secret good thing in people: a wonderful hidden talent. His own ability to write was cultivated during his attendance at writing workshops and a subsequent journalism course whilst in jail. After what he calls a series of coincidences and a lucky break, he was invited to write a column for The Guardian about daily life in prison. When James was finally released, it was with a small amount of money earned from his writing and a burgeoning career in journalism. Today he is a respected writer and social commentator. There are many other fine examples of work carried out in the criminal justice sector, like that of Clean Break, a theatre education and new writing company set up by two women prisoners in 1979. One of their students wrote, Clean Break helped me in a way to find myself again as I was deeply lost. With all the help I got from the tutor and my fellow students I became motivated and started to believe in myself much more. I feel it is the beginning of the path Ive always wanted to follow, and this time nothing and nobody is going to stop me.
Testimony such as this demonstrates just how much prisons and custodial centres that adopt the arts as part of their regime stand to gain. What is badly needed is a concerted, collaborative approach to increasing and sustaining the use of the arts within the prison programmes for the arts to be used in conjunction with (and instead of) more formal learning methods. But still Government officials cite lack of evidence regarding the impact of the arts. If by evidence they mean indication, sign and facts available as proving or supporting notion (Collins English Dictionary) then there is a wealth of it already out there from the likes of Francois Mattarasso and Anne Peaker, and in Arts Council Englands social inclusion research papers, not to mention the hundreds of project evaluations from the frontline deliverers.
Governments often look to the US for lessons and in the criminal justice system there are valuable lessons to be learned from California, where the state funded Arts in Corrections (AIC) regime is embedded in all their prisons and has proved to be economically and socially valuable. Grady Hillman, a nationally respected arts programmer and proponent of AIC, speaking in an interview with Steven Durland from the National Endowment for the Arts, said that Oklahoma and Massachusetts have documented findings that reveal how bringing in an arts programme into a prison can reduce incidents ranging from stealing food to stabbing other inmates by 6090%. Hillman went on to say that, in a study by University College of Santa Barbara of four arts programmes in the state, they found that the money saved through the impact of the programmes was double that spent on running them. California also carried out a seven year re-offending rate study that showed a dramatic drop in re-offending rates of inmates who had participated in arts programmes compared to the general prison population. Fantastic.
So why not an AIC programme for the UK? These programmes of work provide value for tax payers money, from which all of society profits. However, its implementation would require an attitude of innovation and risk-taking both by Government and prison officials, and it must be coupled with a commitment to sustained core funding of arts organisations in the sector. Its a big ask I know, but what are the alternatives build more prisons?
Bridget Edwards is Chief Executive of the Anne Peaker Centre for Arts in Criminal Justice.
t: 01227 471006;
e: ceo@apcentre.org.uk;
w: http://www.apcentre.org.uk