The Limits of Rehabilitation and Recidivism Reduction: Rethinking the Evaluation of Arts Programming in Prisons

• Author: Jackie Omstead,Emily van der Meulen
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0032885520978477
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885520978477

The Prison Journal

2021, Vol. 101(1) 102 –122

© 2020 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885520978477

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Article

The Limits of

Rehabilitation and

Recidivism Reduction:

Rethinking the

Evaluation of Arts

Programming in Prisons

Emily van der Meulen1

and Jackie Omstead2

Abstract

Canadian prison-based arts and other programming are limited at best.

Even the country’s Correctional Investigator, or prison-ombudsperson,

has critiqued the lack of meaningful options in which prisoners can engage.

Those programs that do exist tend to be focused on the logic of penal

rehabilitation, with the end goal of reducing recidivism. In this article, we

showcase the evaluation of a 9-week arts program in a women’s prison, the

aim of which was to build community and foster artistic engagement, thus

running counter to normative carceral logics.

Keywords

arts-based programming, women prisoners, evaluations research, community

arts

1Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

2Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Emily van der Meulen, Department of Criminology, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St.,

Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada.

Email: evandermeulen@ryerson.ca

978477TPJXXX10.1177/0032885520978477The Prison Journalvan der Meulen and Omstead

research-article2020

van der Meulen and Omstead 103

Introduction

Arts programming in Canadian prisons, especially in women’s facilities, is

limited; consequently, so is the literature on this subject. We aim to address

this gap by reflecting on an evaluation of a carceral arts program that ran

from June to August, 2018, in a minimum-security unit of one of Canada’s

women’s prisons. We also draw on and engage with the broader arts evalua-

tion literature. The program was facilitated by a group of artists, including the

second author, who works with justice-involved and marginalized peoples in

both carceral and community contexts. The artists developed a series of

weekly workshops over a 9-week period, culminating in an arts-based evalu-

ation of the program. In the following, we focus on the evaluation process

and results, illustrating a successful and innovative qualitative approach to

carceral research. Our study is unique in that it is one of only a very small

number of evaluations that have been conducted to examine a carceral arts

program (for another example, see Gussak, 2007).

To set the stage, we begin with an introduction to the literature on feder-

ally incarcerated women in Canada, focusing specifically on their access to

programming while in prison, or lack thereof. Next, we survey the literature

related to prison-based arts programs and unpack the institutional logics that

tend to inform them. We then turn to arts-based evaluations, discussing how

they can be particularly useful in carceral contexts, before introducing the

arts program itself. We document how the program unfolded over the sum-

mer months of 2018, providing detail about the evaluation’s findings and

showcasing participants’ feedback. These results suggest a high level of pro-

gram engagement and success, while also instigating new discussions around

prison programming and research, and the challenge of disengaging with the

institutional focus on rehabilitation and recidivism reduction.

Federally Incarcerated Women and Access to

Programs

Canada is home to six federal women’s prisons, spread across the country in

British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia

(Correctional Service of Canada [CSC], 2017a). There are also two regional

psychiatric centers which women can access—one in Saskatchewan and one

in Quebec—that ‘primarily serve as inpatient mental health facilities or psy-

chiatric hospitals’ (Zinger, 2018, p. 21). Each of these facilities is operated by

the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), the federal government agency

responsible for administering court-ordered sentences of 2 years or more;

sentences of less than 2 years are under the jurisdiction of the provinces and