Barring progress

Anne Peaker Centre launched the Arts Alliance last November, to advocate for and strengthen the work of the developing sector of art in prisons in the following ways: influencing policy, raising profile, representing views, stimulating collaborations, education and training; providing research and evidence. At the launch, artists were encouraged to voice their concerns and to hear about some of the initiatives that the Government was involved in, to help deliver and embed the arts in the criminal justice system (CJS). Two weeks later, a headline in The Sun read “Are You Having a Laugh?”. The article told how a convicted terrorist took part in stand-up comedy lessons run by The Comedy School at Whitemoor Prison, citing it as another example of jail officials “...dreaming up crazy projects without a thought of the consequences”. Whilst we were not surprised by another tabloid outburst, we were dismayed by the lack of support from the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. He deemed the project unacceptable and ordered it to be cancelled immediately. Not only did Whitemoor cancel its Comedy School, but it cancelled two other long-standing arts projects with a good reputation and proven outcomes.

Hitting the target
If Straw had asked us, we would have pointed out that whether an inmate takes part in a workshop is the decision of the prison staff and not of the hired arts organisation. We would have given him the learning outcomes that were derived from Comedy School’s workshops, such as communication, negotiation, and an analysis of issues such as peer pressure, cultural contexts and social behaviours. All these work to the Ministry of Justice’s agenda of rehabilitation and feed into the seven pathways that the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has designed to reduce reoffending, in particular those that relate to education, training and employment, children and families, and attitudes, thinking and behaviour. This also stalls the good efforts of MoJ civil servants who are actively working to see the arts embedded in the criminal justice system in line with the NOMS’s ‘Working with the Third Sector to Reduce Reoffending’ plan. However, the real battle came with the ensuing Prison Service Order (PSO 50) issued to Prison Governors, warning them to ensure all activities are “acceptable, purposeful and meet the public acceptability test”. Government officials could not describe to us what a public acceptability test looked like and what kind of score a project should achieve to pass it!
All is not lost though. We did win some concessions, with the Arts Alliance given as a useful contact for Governors, and had a flurry of enquiries when the PSO went live. We also gained a commitment from David Hanson, Minister for Justice, to meet with the Arts Alliance once every six months while we continued to monitor the impact of the PSO, and to actively review the PSO at the end of the year. We hope to see its demise then.
Fear of the new
Meanwhile, the effect has been that whilst a few arts projects have been cancelled, work remains largely unaffected. What we have found (and feared) is that far from giving prison staff the confidence to be innovative or creative in their management of prisoners, the PSO has caused a pervading sense of fear to creep in. Prison staff remain unsure as to whether they will have the support of their managers should one of their projects be picked up by the press. This has led to artists being advised to be very careful how they describe their activities and long delays in getting projects in whilst their ‘suitability’ (read as ‘potential for embarrassment’) is double checked. If this situation continues, we fear that the numbers of cancelled projects will increase, with prison governors sticking only to what is safe.
Shining examples
A drive to promote the impact of arts projects in the criminal justice system is being planned. This includes case studies, regional events, good news stories and celebrity endorsements, building on the positive reporting of several journalists at the beginning of this year. Currently, programmes are still being delivered. Clean Break’s production, ‘This Wide Night’, won the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for a work of outstanding quality for English-speaking theatre, and ‘Westside Story’ by Pimlico Opera, performed by prison officers and prisoners at Wandsworth Prison, was very well received. Dance United’s performance, ‘Destino’, produced in collaboration with Sadler’s Wells and a company of professional and non-professional dancers, was a triumph.
There are several pieces of research that support the impact of arts-based work on rehabilitation of offenders, including Music in Prison’s ‘Beats & Bars’ and Anne Peaker Centre’s own ‘Learning to Learn’. They show that 74% of men who participated in Music in Prison’s project gave ten out of ten when asked how likely they were to participate in more arts or education programmes as a result, and 88% indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that the programme had given them the confidence to participate in other educational programmes. At the start of the Learning to Learn project, only half of all prisoners believed in the existence of legitimate opportunities for them ‘on the outside’. Upon completion of the project, 72% perceived that legitimate opportunities existed for them. Further, at the start of the project, 21% agreed or strongly agreed to the statement that ‘there are no places where ex-offenders can find work’. The proportion fell to a mere 9.1% after completion of the project.
Funding remains a challenge, particularly during the economic downturn. Trusts and Foundations are still great supporters. The Ministry of Justice has provided funding, and continues to do so, for arts-based projects, and Arts Council England continues to support work with young people at risk of offending. Next year is the European Year of Social Inclusion, and it is to be hoped that this will open more funding streams. In the meantime, look out for strands one and two of European Social funding that might well support collaborative arts projects.