Judith Tannenbaum

Prison Arts

I often receive requests for advice from people who want to share art with people in prison. I have compiled some basic information on this page.

People write me because I taught poetry at San Quentin in the 1980s through California’s Arts in Corrections, and in many prisons nationally since then.

You can read poems by my San Quentin students
and learn about my memoir, Disguised as a Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin.

To get a deep sense of what art-making means to someone inside prison, I suggest reading this op-ed piece and this essay by my former student, Spoon Jackson. And here is a PBS segment on Richard Shelton’s prison poetry workshop in Arizona.

Classic prison writers range from Jack Henry Abbott to Piri Thomas. A few recent books by people inside are

Mother California by Kenneth E. Hartmann
That Bird Has My Wings by Jarvis Masters
A Question of Freedom by R. Dwayne Betts
Finding Freedom by Jarvis Masters
How You Lose by J.C. Amberchele
Letters from the Pen by Dale McCurry
Wilderness and Razor Wire: A Naturalist’s Observations from Prison and Time of Grace by Ken Lamberton
T each the Free Man by Peter Nathaniel Malae

The past fifteen years have seen some excellent anthologies of prisoner writing, including:

Doing Time (edited by Bell Chevigny)
Couldn’t Keep it to Myself and I’ll Fly Away (by the women of York Correctional Institution in Connecticut and edited by workshop leader, Wally Lamb)
Prison Writing in 20th Century America (edited by H. Bruce Franklin)
This Prison Where I Live (an international anthology of prisoner writing edited by Siobhan Dowd)
Undoing Time (edited by Jeff Evans)
Wall Tappings (edited by Judith A. Scheffler).

Phyllis Kornfeld’s Cellblock Visions is a beautiful collection of visual art made by people in prison.

Although materials and desire are all one needs to make art, there are an increasing number of programs through which people from the outside come inside to share. Here are two excellent sources of information about existing programs and central issues.

One is an overview (you can buy a print copy of this resource (one that includes additional material)
and the other provides a great deal of information.

Some of these programs are based in universities, some are nonprofits, some are government programs, and still others exist through church groups or because of dedicated individuals (sometimes these are prison staff and sometimes “free people.”) Here are four excellent programs among dozens:

A Prison Arts Coalition blog site allows conversation and shared information among people sharing art in and around correctional settings.

PEN has an annual prison writing contest, and offers many ways for writers on the outside to work with writers on the inside. BuildingBloc art collective is one of a growing number of arts groups (and individual artists) whose work is influenced by social realities such as policies of mass incarceration. Stephen Hartnett’s Incarceration Nation is one example of such work.

Creativity Held Captive, by Patricia McConnel, is the best single resource I know for sharing art inside. Patricia has served time herself, and her knowledge, and ability to express this knowledge, is deep.

Other excellent resources are:

Teaching the Arts Behind Bars edited by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams
Handbook for Writers in Prison and Words Over Walls: Starting a Writing Workshop in a Prison (which were prepared for, and distributed by, PEN).
You can read “advice from the experts.”
Also, I wrote a Manual for Artists Working in Prison (PDF) in 1989 that many have found useful.

Many programs want, or find they must, evaluate whether participating prisoners have a decreased incidence of disciplinary actions and/or lower rates of recidivism. The Brewster Report (scroll to the bottom of the page) is one of the earliest evaluations.

Many who have worked inside have written about the experience. Some of these books combine the writing of prisoner students and their instructors. Three of these are:

Only the Dead Can Kill: Stories from Jail (Margo Perin)
The Funhouse Mirror: Reflections on Prison (Robert Ellis Gordon)
The Soul Know No Bars: Inmates Reflect on Life, Death, & Hope (Drew Leder)

There are also memoirs, such as my own Disguised, and other nonfiction descriptions.

True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman, is a wonderfully well written account
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by journalist Ted Conover, gives a good sense of prison from a guard’s point of view
Crossing the Yard: Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer by Richard Shelton (see my post on this book on the blog page of this site)

Many of us who have worked inside feel - not only a strong pull and commitment to the actual men and women we’ve met, not only awe and appreciation for the ability of so many prisoners to keep soul alive - but also tremendous anger and frustration at current prison policies and practices. There are many books that give the facts behind our feelings. Here are two that give historical perspective

With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America by Scott Christianson
The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement by Eric Cummins

And here are a few of the dozens that explore various aspects of what has come to be called “the prison industrial complex:”

Going up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation by Joseph T. Hallinan
Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State by Joe Domanick
Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett by Jennifer Gonnerman
When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry by Joan Petersilia
All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated by Nell Bernstein.

And here are excellent websites (360 degrees and Thousand Kites) that explore the complexity of issues and points of view.

There are also many fine films that explore prisons and the prison crisis. Here’s a new film from Thousand Kites.

A few of the many organizations focused on prison issues are

Each of these sites has links to many more resources.

Prison Arts

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