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Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Suzanne Kessler of Purchase College examines the benefits of incorporating the arts into prison-based rehabilitation programs.
Suzanne Kessler is Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Psychology at Purchase College. She teaches courses on social psychology, psychology of gender, psychology of women, psychology of communication, and the social psychology of prisons. She holds a Ph. D. from the City University of New York.
Dr. Suzanne Kessler - The Arts and Prison Rehabilitation
Are prison art rehabilitation programs effective? Researchers from Purchase College, State University of New York collaborated with researchers from the New York State Department of Corrections to answer this question. Specifically we were testing the value of a program called Rehabilitation through the Arts - RTA for short. For 15 years RTA has provided prisoners with experiences in theatre, dance, voice, writing and visual art. The claim is that those in the program learn social and cognitive skills that act as a springboard to education.
Incarcerated men from this program at Sing Sing Prison were compared to incarcerated men who hadn't participated in the program. The 2 groups were matched on a number of variables: the number of years they were in prison, their age, their length of sentence, race, and crime category.
Here are some of our important findings:
1st, although the two groups had the same educational level when they entered prison, more RTA participants enrolled in and completed educational programs than their matched peers.
Secondly, program participants completed their GED program at a faster rate than their peers.
Thirdly, after joining the program, the participants who had already completed high school spent more time enrolled in college programs.
These results are extremely important, since we know that completing education programs in prison has a strong and well-established effect on reducing the number of released inmates who return to prison. Rehabilitation through the Arts is clearly effective. It offers prisoners the opportunity to develop social, language, literacy and leadership skills --- all of which, we have demonstrated, contribute to educational success.