Art and Mindfulness Behind Bars: Examples From Wyoming Prison-Based Courses on Memoir and Stoic Philosophy

• Author: Susan Dewey,Robert S. Colter,Alec J. Muthig,Katy Brock
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0032885519861058
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885519861058

The Prison Journal

2019, Vol. 99(4S) 61S –83S

© 2019 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885519861058

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Article

Art and Mindfulness

Behind Bars: Examples

From Wyoming

Prison-Based Courses

on Memoir and

Stoic Philosophy

Susan Dewey1, Alec J. Muthig1,

Robert S. Colter1 and Katy Brock2

Abstract

In this self-reflective piece, the coauthors critically engage with their

experiences using arts-based and mindfulness practices with incarcerated

women and men and university students. We offer insights derived from

teaching two separate arts-based courses in prison. The first focused on

memoir-writing, a unique storytelling form in which a writer’s experiences

take center stage. The second involved engaging with philosophy to discover

more effective ways of living. The experiences of all concerned in these two

classes emphasized the power of arts-based and mindfulness education to

transform lives, both within and outside prison walls.

Keywords

prison, arts, mindfulness

1University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA

2University of Jamestown, ND, USA

Corresponding Author:

Susan Dewey, School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice, University of Wyoming, 102 Ross

Hall, Dept. 4297, 100 E. University Ave., Laramie, WY 82071, USA.

Email: sdewey3@uwyo.edu

861058TPJXXX10.1177/0032885519861058The Prison JournalDewey et al.

research-article2019

62S The Prison Journal 99(4S)

Introduction: Thinking Critically About Critical

Thinking in Prison Arts Programs

State prison administration-led correctional education programs generally

focus on adult basic education and remain confined to literacy, vocational

training, and high school equivalency as a result of constrained budgets and

the prevailing punitive ethos among the general public steeped in tough-on-

crime rhetoric (Brown & Rios, 2014; Carver & Harrison, 2016).

As part of a broader correctional shift toward “evidence-based practices”

that achieve “effective outcomes,” correctional education programs face

pressure to demonstrate efficacy and impact, using narrowly circumscribed

criteria such as test scores, pass rates, and recidivism (Van Voorhis, 2012).

The arts, which we broadly define as the theory and practice of creativity and

critical thinking fostered by visual, written, and oral forms of self-expression,

generally have no place in prison education programs’ approach to the mas-

tery of basic academic skills.

Having spent years working together in the U.S. prison system, we under-

stand that this approach to prison education is all too easy to critique from the

standpoint of individuals who have the luxury of living and working at a

university. Reading and otherwise engaging with and reflecting on the world

of ideas and discussions about the human condition are all normal aspects of

the relatively privileged lives enjoyed by university colleagues who rarely

have to make decisions at a moment’s notice that will dramatically affect

other people, fear for their personal safety, or see painfully negative depic-

tions of their lives and means of making a living in superficial media reports.

All of these realities are normal aspects of everyday life for those who work

and live in the prisons where we have offered college courses for the past 3

years as part of our commitment to Wyoming Pathways from Prison, a free

college-in-prison program.

In many ways, state-led correctional education systems take their cue

from how underfunded public schools set and measure goals for their impov-

erished students. Often, these approaches form an “educational enclosure”

closely resembling prison in its regimentation and focus on vocational train-

ing to the exclusion of creativity and intellectual development (Sojoyner,

2016). Such enclosures impose ideological limitations on disadvantaged stu-

dents who are also more likely to face the school-to-prison-pipeline that is

characterized by increased securitization measures—making public schools

resemble prisons in ways demonstrated to increase tensions, enhance feelings

of exclusion, and otherwise feel less safe (Mallett, 2016). Negative school

experiences prior to incarceration are typical for many incarcerated persons,

with poor academic performance one of the many by-products of parental