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Do arts programs belong in prisons? The notion raises eyebrows and blood pressure in some quarters. For instance, the Reform Party of Canada's Waste Report, which points out government spending the party considers excessive, includes grants made to the Prison Arts Foundation.

Yet arts programs have proven benefits for inmates and institutions. In the United Kingdom, the website of the National Campaign for the Arts at www.ecna.org/nca discusses the use of the arts in rehabilitating prisoners.

"Numerous studies show the positive effect of arts work with offenders. About 30 per cent of male prisoners and 40 per cent of female prisoners attend arts classes. Violent incidents in jails which have arts programs are 60 to 90 per cent lower than in those without such programs."

The NCA also highlights the markedly lower recidivism rate reported by prison arts programs, including the UK's well-established Geese Theatre Company. Geese Theatre has documented a reconviction rate of only 22 per cent - about half the expected rate for the violent offenders with which it works. (For more on the company, read Jessica Kingsley's book, Arts Approaches to Conflict.) And only one-quarter of former prisoners who participated in California's Arts in Corrections Program re-offend within a year of release - also half the rate of those who did not participate.

But statistics don't tell stories. And it is through stories that we will best understand how the arts can change prisoners' lives. In The Language of Life, broadcast journalist Bill Moyers interviews award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. "An abandoned child, [Baca's] life on the streets led to a maximum-security prison in Arizona, where he taught himself to read and write. His first poems were written there." In a moving statement, Baca describes why he tried to read his poems at a parole board hearing. "It was my only way of telling them this is who I'd become - this is who I am; this is my record."

Deltonia Cook is a former inmate at BC's Matsqui Institution. He has taken 260 hours of creative writing instruction through Surrey Continuing Education's (SCE) outreach classes, and he has encouraged other inmates to participate. In 1998, guards escorted Cook to the Surrey Writer's Conference, where he received the Special Achievement Award. SWC presents the award annually to an individual who has made a major difference in his or her writing community. Since then, Cook has been moved to another institution to await a new trial.

Writer Ed Griffin works at SCE, where he helps to organize the conference. He has also taught at Matsqui for several years. Griffin believes creative writing rehabilitates prisoners. "They start off with a screw-the-system attitude. But then they start writing about their childhoods and they begin to realize all kinds of things. It's a process of learning and of increasing self-awareness."

Gordon Tanner, Matsqui's Director of Education, also champions creative writing and arts therapy programs. He believes they help inmates to heal, to change, and to replace anti-social behaviours with positive ones. Tanner says studies show that cognitive education -- which most arts programs provides --reduces the risk of re-offending. The positive response to SCE's outreach program has resulted in its expansion into Mission Institution.

Matsqui and Mission are among the North American institutions now offering prison arts programs which run the gamut of artistic disciplines. But why give criminals these opportunities? The reason may be more important than you think. Despite a steady fall in overall crime rates since 1991, polls conducted in 1997 and 1998 show that Canadians believe crime is on the increase and is more violent than ever. Yet the number of inmates increased by 22 per cent in federal penitentiaries and by 12 percent in provincial prisons between 1989-90 and 1994-95. By 1996-97, we were incarcerating 129 inmates for every 100,000 people in Canada. But this increase has not stemmed the public's fear -- perhaps with reason.

In The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives, David Cayley writes about the threat increasing prison populations pose to civilized society and personal safety. Cayley says, "The product of imprisonment is a person who will require more imprisonment in future." He fears that many existing institutions "nurture and reinforce criminal conduct rather than deter and rehabilitate [it]." And he urges us to find alternatives to incarceration.

Others share Cayley's concern. The Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Ministers Responsible for Justice endorsed a statement of guiding principles in the 1996 paper, Corrections Population Growth. Two principles specifically recognize the limits of incarceration. One of these states that "The best long-term protection of the public results from offenders being returned to a law abiding lifestyle in the community."

Arts programs are one means of achieving that goal. By increasing inmates' self-esteem and self-awareness, and by teaching them positive ways to make decisions, manage feelings, and change behaviours, arts programs have proven they belong in prison.

Jenifer Milner is the Communications Manager of the Vancouver Cultural Alliance. This article first appeared in the VCA newsletter and is reprinted with permission.