Performing Arts in Prisons

Captive Audiences

Michael Balfour, Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, Linda Davey, John Rynne, Huib Schippers

• Publisher: Intellect
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781783209972, 9781783209972
• eBook ISBN: 9781789380156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performance Art

Performing Arts in Prisons explores prison arts in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Chile, and creates a new framework for understanding its practices. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests music, theatre, poetry and dance can contribute to prisoner wellbeing, management, rehabilitation and reintegration. Performing Arts in Prisons represents a range of distinct perspectives on thesubject, from an inspector of prisons to the voice of the prisoner. The book includes a spectrum of arts approaches and models of practice alongside theory, critical commentary and accounts of personal experience to present a full analysis of the value and effects of creative arts in prison.

Chapter 1

A correctional perspective on the creative arts in prisons

Andrew Day

In June 2013, the number of people in Australian prisons reached over 30,000 for the first time in history (ABS 2013). This represents an increase of 5 per cent from 2012 and means that 0.2 per cent of Australia’s adult population is held in Australian corrective services custody on any one day. This imprisonment rate (170 prisoners per 100,000 adult population) is relatively high when compared with other countries, reflecting what some regard as an era of ‘mass incarceration’ in Australia (Pearson 2001) and highlighting the need to implement a wide range of strategies to reduce the need to incarcerate.

While prisons serve multiple purposes for society, it is clear that the rehabilitation of offenders is a priority for Australian correctional services. Indeed, the adoption of the term ‘corrections’ signifies the importance of rehabilitation, which in Australia can be traced back to the revolutionary prison reform work of Captain Alexander Maconochie on Norfolk Island in 1844 (Morris 2002). Today, every Australian jurisdiction has a remit to provide rehabilitation programmes and services, although there is little consistency in the legislative fiats that drive service delivery. As Heseltine et al. (2011: 4) note,

parliamentary authority for the delivery of correctional services across the nation changes markedly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Sometimes it appears in the relevant criminal statutes, sometimes in correctional legislation and sometimes in the various Acts related to sentencing that apply in some, but not all, jurisdictions.

While these jurisdictional differences do create some problems in developing national approaches to offender rehabilitation, they also introduce freedom to interpret the types of programmes that might be regarded as rehabilitative. This, however, has diminished in recent years following the Corrective Services Administrators’ Council (CSAC 2012) endorsement of the Australian Offender Programme Standards. These Standards detail what is expected of offender programmes across all jurisdictions, as well as the professional practice standards with which offender programme facilitators are expected to comply. An ‘Offender Programme’ is defined as a structured intervention that addresses the factors directly linked to offending behaviour, and for a programme to meet the standards, it has to comply with a number of different criteria – such as being based on an articulated model of change, being empirically validated and addressing the identified criminogenic needs of the target group at which it is aimed. Although these standards are ‘guiding principles for programme facilitators, recruiters, trainers, supervisors, and accreditation sources’ (CSAC 2012: x), they do mean that at least basic compliance is required if correctional services are to support the widespread delivery of a particular programme.

The aim of this chapter is to consider what this might mean for those arts practitioners who are interested in delivering programmes in the correctional setting. While many might argue that the activities that they promote (whether these be related to prison theatre, literature, visual arts, music, or dance) have inherent value, it is becoming increasingly clear that correctional services have neither the will nor the budgets to support activities that are not clearly linked to their key performance indicators. There may still be scope for externally funded, small-scale, local programmes, but initiatives founded on this basis will inevitably position the creative arts as peripheral to the aims of the organizations in which they are delivered. For example, programmes might be run on the basis that they are innovative or experimental. The result is a national picture where the creative arts programmes across Australia are fragmented, poorly funded (often through external sources) and overly dependent on the interests and skills of individual practitioners and local corrections managers. In short, there would appear to be an absence of a strategic approach to this type of service delivery, which might allow participation in the creative arts to become an abiding feature of prison life with which all prisoners are able to engage.

How, then, might the creative arts be positioned in relation to the broader goal of offender rehabilitation? This is an area where correctional administrations have specific goals – and, indeed, specific remits – regarding what is supported. Of course, many creative arts programmes do not aspire to rehabilitate. There are important differences between art that occurs in a particular setting (e.g. theatre presented in a prison), art that seeks to promote particular goals (e.g. prison theatre) and art that is about imprisonment. Djurichkovic (2011), for example, talks about the range of different purposes that the visual arts can fulfil in Australian prisons. The most widely discussed of these relates to the mental health or personal development of participants in relation to the educational and therapeutic benefits of artistic engagement. However, she also notes that some practitioners draw attention to the benefit of using arts programmes in overcoming the adverse effects of institutionalization, as well as assisting with the management of problematic prisoner behaviour. It is interesting that this review does not identify any literature that positions visual arts in Australian prisons as rehabilitative in their own right, although this is clearly implied in some programme descriptions. For example, Johnson (2008) suggests that displaying or selling artwork gives inmates the chance to engage in productive exchanges with the community before and after release, which for Djurichkovic (2011: 13) is an ‘important element of any genuine rehabilitation attempt of the incarcerated’.

From a correctional perspective, such assertions about the value of arts programmes are unlikely to provide a sufficient rationale for programme delivery, especially if these discussions are framed around their potential benefits to the wellbeing of prisoners through their educational or recreational benefits. Of course, this is not to say that they are without value in this regard; as Dean and Field (2003) argue, the opportunity to participate in creative expression through the arts is important in its own right. The point is simply that prisoner wellbeing will never be a primary driver for the widespread implementation of programmes in prisons, which play a very different role for the community than they do in, say, psychiatric hospitals. It is in this context that the ability to demonstrate the rehabilitative value of arts activities becomes important and challenging.

This chapter suggests that the wider implementation of arts-based approaches has been restricted by a lack of direct evidence demonstrating that arts programmes do actually contribute to reductions in reoffending. The argument is pragmatic insofar as this leads to problems with correctional accreditation and endorsement, which prevent practitioners from gaining access to prisons and receiving the direct support of correctional services for their activities, whether this support is financial or in kind. This argument is consistent with Davey et al.’s (2014: 9) observation that

there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence to suggest that theatre has a significant role to play in working with offenders and the systems and communities to which they belong. However, advocates for arts practice in prisons have produced insufficient evaluation of this work that provides sufficient data to establish this empirically.

The focus, then, is on issues relating to the widespread implementation of creative arts programmes rather than the particular circumstances that influence the delivery of a particular programme in a particular setting.

The role of the arts practitioner in prison

There is genuine uncertainty about the appropriateness of the arts practitioner working as an ‘agent’ of correctional services. Some arts practitioners place high value on their independence from the prison (and the broader justice system), and are deeply ambivalent about working in a context that is, by definition, punitive. Johnson (2008: 15), for example, states that ‘prison is intended to strip power and deliver pain; art empowers and delivers happiness’ – a position that is implicitly reactionary to the prison regime that supports the delivery of the programme.

The national standards further require that programmes are targeted at those who present as at higher risk of reoffending, highlighting the contrast between what is expected and the ‘selection-for-success’ process associated with participation in many prison arts programmes. Gussak (2007), for example, describes how a mental health counsellor selected prisoners for an art programme on the basis of her prior work with them, while Argue et al. (2009) outline how a history of successful participation in other programmes was the basis for selection into their programme. Such selection processes are unlikely to systematically target higher-risk offenders. In addition, selecting participants on the basis of risk introduces an additional element of coercion or secondary gain about which arts practitioners are likely to have significant reservations.

Davey et al. (2014) observe that the most striking examples of prison theatre that have deliberately engaged with the rehabilitation paradigm are the work of the Geese Theatre Company (see Chapter 1 in this volume) and the Theatre in Prisons and Probation Centre in the United Kingdom. These organizations have worked closely with prisons and community correction agencies to design and evaluate theatre projects to explicitly address those risk factors associated with reoffending (Balfour 2000). However, programmes of this type are not currently available in Australian correctional settings, and do not appear to have had a strong influence on local practitioners. This may be because of the relatively low number of trained arts practitioners in Australia who have exposure to this approach, difficulties in gaining access to prisons to deliver programmes and limited funding opportunities. Those who are involved in prison arts programmes may have personal reservations about engaging with the rehabilitation paradigm in the way that Geese Theatre has, or perhaps they simply are not interested in this type of work. Clements (2004: 173), for example, argues that ‘it is important that art classes do not get lost in their instrumentality’ where their merit is only measured in terms of their success in achieving criminal justice aims and targets. Davey et al. (2014) also refer to the development of a ‘counter movement’ within prison theatre that seeks to distance theatre in prisons from the broader correctional goals of risk-management.

Targets for rehabilitation

Even when arts programmes do explicitly aim to provide rehabilitation, evaluation of outcomes is hampered by the difficulties associated with articulating the mechanisms by which participation might be expected to change offending behaviour. There are particular difficulties in establishing the specific effects of artistic activities on dynamic risk factors. A wide range of risk factors are known to influence the risk of reoffending, including anti-social attitudes, substance use, problem-solving and association with peers who also offend (Andrews and Bonta 2010). While it is relatively easy to see how many of the activities associated with participation in artistic activities may be relevant to these risk factors (e.g. learning to work in teams, developing skills in appropriate emotional expression), it is unlikely that these rather indirect outcomes will be sufficient to enable change to take place by itself. This has led some to view participation in prison creative art programmes as a precursor to offence-focused rehabilitation. Day and colleagues (2006) suggest, for example, that drama-based techniques can be used to motivate offenders towards change. Indeed, the Geese Theatre has integrated the work of Portuguese drama therapist Fernando Santos Vieira with Prochaska and DiClemente’s (1990) stages of change model to develop a group-based intervention that has the aim of motivating violent offenders. This intervention, ‘The house of four rooms’, invokes a powerful theatrical metaphor and uses ritual and metaphor to explore motivation to change. The programme includes a preparatory stage, using mask, metaphor, improvisation, narrative and role reversal to raise awareness of offending; it aims to build motivation, group cohesiveness, problem focus and awareness prior to working on the four rooms of change. It then involves a detailed exploration of offending scenes using techniques such as improvisation, role reversal and interactive observation. Participants then re-create and explore their own offending behaviour in detail, further raising awareness of problem behaviours and associated emotional needs (Mountford and Farrell 1998).

An alternative approach is to view prison arts programmes as contributing to a broader process desistance from crime. McNeill et al. (2011), for example, argue that arts approaches are not discrete targeted ‘interventions’ in their own right, but rather have a unique and worthwhile capacity to ‘inspire’ the desistance process. The suggestion here is that the aim of an arts programme is not necessarily to prevent re-offending, but to provide prisoners with the capabilities that can help them to contribute positively to society after release from custody.

Evidence

It is likely that it is only when direct evidence about the impact of arts-based interventions on reoffending (or at least risk of reoffending) can be presented that they will be implemented more systematically. While there is significant anecdotal evidence to suggest that the arts represent a viable therapeutic tool to prevent offending, empirical evidence to support this is lacking. Even in the United Kingdom, where the demand for accreditation of rehabilitation and educational programmes has led to an upsurge in the number of evaluations of prison arts programmes (e.g. Hughes 2005; Johnson et al. 2011; McLewin 2012; Miles and Clarke 2006), these trials fall some way short of providing the type of evidence required to describe them as ‘evidence based’. This term is defined by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy in the following way:

a programme or practice that has been tested in heterogeneous or intended populations with multiple randomised and/or statistically controlled evaluations, or one large multiple-site randomised or statistically control evaluation, where the weight of evidence from a systematic review demonstrates sustained improvements in recidivism or other outcomes of interest. Further, ‘evidence-based’ means a programme or practice that can be implemented with a set of procedures to allow successful replication […] and, when possible, has been determined to be cost-effective.

(Drake 2013: 2)

Random-assignment controlled trial studies are particularly important for establishing an evidence base, primarily because of problems associated with self-selection into treatment groups (see above). There are, however, significant challenges related to conducting randomized control trials in prison settings, including the limited number of prisoners who participate, the heterogeneity of the population, the length of programmes and the effects of dropouts or non-completion (Farrington and Jolliffe 2002). There are additional issues in disentangling the effects of other interventions (such as offending behaviour programmes or pre-release employment programmes), and low base rates for reoffending mean that very long-term follow-up is required. Such problems are, of course, not restricted to arts programmes. Duggan and colleagues (2007) conclude their review of the evidence for the treatment of personality disorder with a number of comments about the limited number of studies that have been conducted, uncertainty about their scientific quality and problems with small sample sizes, short follow-up periods and the tendency to focus on community settings. This is important, as it would be unrealistic to set different criteria for establishing the effectiveness of arts-based interventions from those used to assess the value of other types of programme. However, as Parkes and Bilby (2010: 104) observe, ‘art programmes do not lend themselves to investigation via traditional evaluation methodologies’. As a result, most evaluations have been restricted to short-term, pilot or experimental art programmes with small participant numbers. Thus, while encouraging initial results have been reported, questions remain about how these might be generalized, even when future programmes rely on demonstrating the ‘success’ of pilot programmes.

One of the most significant problems that has inhibited larger scale evaluation is the diversity of those interventions that are described with reference to the arts. There...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Performing arts in prisons – creative perspectives
• Chapter 1: A correctional perspective on the creative arts in prisons
• Chapter 2: Geese Theatre Company – 30 years on 33
• Chapter 3: One Mob Different Country: First Peoples of Australia dance in Darwin Prison
• Chapter 4: ‘This place is full of drama queens’: Reflecting on the value of drama in a women’s prison
• Chapter 5: Through the looking glass: A voice from the inside
• Chapter 6: Breaking the fifth wall: How performance might assist desistance from crime
• Chapter 7: Drumming interventions in Australian prisons: Insights from the Rhythm2Recovery model
• Chapter 8: Arts in Corrections New Zealand
• Chapter 9: The play’s the thing: Performance in Prison Shakespeare
• Chapter 10: ‘Heart and heartbeat’: Working beyond prison theatre, performing protagonismo social in the real world
• Chapter 11: ‘Strategies for success’: Trusting the power of the arts
• Chapter 12: Performing arts activities with hopes to build positive self-identity, heal harms and broaden the US public’s perceptions of people inside prisons
• Chapter 13: Unlocked: Prison poetry workshops as a key to engaging inmates
• Chapter 14: ‘Music is the colour of my skin’: The story of the Murru Band
• Concluding reflections
• Index