Are You Kidding Me?

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This is Shylock from my production of The Merchant of Venice which I directed at Framingham Women’s Prison in 1988, a year my students at Middlesex Community College now say is before they were born.  But it was the beginning of my amazing run behind bars, directing eight plays where I saw women transform their hopes and dreams.  They grew stronger, felt more confident and as one woman, Dolly, who played Antonio said, “We were stars.”

Theatre behind bars allows prisoners all the benefits of what art allows any of us — and added to that — it gives prisoners a chance to have access to a world they’ve often felt excluded from — a world that education gives them access to.   All studies done on prisoners show that the more education you have, the more likely you are to stay out of prison.  Education = less crime.  Except maybe in the case of bankers and politicians. And guess what?  READING SHAKESPEARE IS EDUCATION.

Sorry I had to yell.  But that’s part of why I couldn’t believe it when I heard that University of Wisconsin Professor, Jonathan Shailor, had been told he could not continue his Shakespeare Program in prison.  Like me, Shailor has had the joy of watching people behind bars change, read more to their kids, get into college after they get out or hold down steady jobs.  He began his program in 2004; had a hiatus; and this year had a grant to begin again.

He was told–okay hold onto your seats — by the Department of Correction — and they do not correct much as far as I can see — he was told that his Shakespeare program did not fit the definition of  an “evidence-based practice.”

(Take breath, Jean)  So I know that “evidence-based” is the new hot term in many pools I dip my toe in — education, criminal justice, medicine — BUT reading and studying Shakespeare is not evidence-based?  Performing plays is not evidence-based?  All you have to do is read one of many studies, anecdotal or hard studies, some that I am sure Jonathan provided to the prison.  All you have to do is READ. 

I have to say that it’s a crime not to know how arts change lives.  Maybe the Wisconsin officials should have read Jonathan’s book that I was happy to be a part of Performing New Lives, where practitioners of theatre in prison all across the country talk about the amazing men and women who transform themselves through the arts.

Or they could watch this amazing video to see that there’s “evidence” in these photos:  Somebody Teach me to Embed a Video

My Humorous Take on Deadly Serious Subjects

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Welcome to the Fun House…

So hello to my blog, “Justice with Jean” where I intend to talk about all things prison, parole and probation.  And believe it or not, there’s a lot to laugh at regarding our criminal justice system.  I mean if you’re not crying or screaming your lungs out at the amount of, let’s see, shall I say “stupidity?” or maybe “irrationality” or in a pinch, “the ultimately impossible to explain?”

So, for a moment, come with me to a medium security prison.  Imagine you want to visit a loved one.  Now seriously, make it someone you like a lot or else this won’t work.  You don’t mind filling out a form, putting things in a locker like keys and money.  You understand policy.  Hey, you know why you have to take your shoes off and let them look in your mouth and behind your ears and hey, it’s no biggie when your bra sets the machine off and you have to go into what looks like a closet to be wanded. No biggie.  It’s prison.

You have no idea when you enter the not so receptive “reception area” that you can buy a chit, a thingie that functions like a debit card, and after you enter the Visiting Room, you’ll be able to buy him a sandwich and yourself a diet coke to wash down the fury you are about to feel. 

So, eventually you’re in this big warehousey room.  Prisoners are sitting in those plastic chairs that kind of look like saucer cups from a fun house ride.  The chairs are spaced with about a foot of white in between each one and they’re all attached.  So there are six lines of these chairs and they are NOT civil.  Like you have to keep your back pressed against the chair, your hands in your lap and if there are three of you, then you are sitting in a little line, actually all facing straight ahead with correction officers coming around and telling you not to lean forward.  

They are not like this:  which would not be so bad since you are at least facing the person or people who are visiting you (overlooking the fact that the prisoner is the one marked in scarlet letter tones.)

 

And they are not like this:  which also has some potential for not killing your neck and actually hearing a conversation. No, visiting is more like what Jim Ridgeway describes in his fabulous article about medical parole in Mother Jones: “Prisoners and visitors may sit next to, but not opposite, one another. They must keep their feet flat on the floor at all times and their backs against the chair backs. Guards posted at stations at either end of the room roam about.” 

And surprise, they don’t just roam about.  They tell you not to sit forward.  They tell you not to touch.  They remind you over a loud speaker too.  The sound in a visiting room is deafening with acoustics like some sort of locker room from hell. So forget hearing.

Who visits in a line, huh?  Who?  Apparently Massachusetts.  And Oregon:  Although in Oregon, at least prisoners can sit close enough to talk across the aisle.  Here, we strap in, sit back and forget having a real conversation.