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The success stories, particularly when you hear them from young people who have been in trouble are heartwarming and there is growing body of research and anecdotal evidence that using the arts with troubled and troublesome young people can change hearts and minds more effectively than simply banging them up and giving them a tough lesson.
And the successes are good news at a time when anxiety over youth crime and the menace of our young seems to be ratcheted ever higher. So you might expect our leaders to be making sure we know that the funding put into arts in the criminal justice system is money well spent.
Yet although the government through the Youth Justice Board, different departments such as the Department for Education and Skills, the English Regional Arts Board actually put millions of pounds into arts-based initiatives for children at risk of, and those already offending every year, we hear remarkably little about them.

Puzzling isn’t it? Particularly as arts schemes linked as they increasingly are to literacy and numeracy, are seen as an important part of the government’s drive towards social inclusion.
Could the reason the findings are not trumpeted louder be that our leaders believe they would put at risk the populist vote if they are seen to offer antisocial youngsters activities that may actually be entertaining for them and measured in terms of raised self-esteem, optimism and confidence rather than a clearcut diminution in re-offending? Better the reasoning appears to be, to talk up the tough on crime approach and fund creative arts projects sotto voce.

One of the problems, explains Nikki Crane at the Arts Council who is responsible for linking arts with the criminal justice system, is that very little nationwide research or comprehensive evaluation has been done into what is and is not achieved. Although the Unit for Arts and Offenders, supported by the Arts Council, has created a think tank to do a long term evaluation.
Clearly a key question that does need addressing is ‘what do the arts offer to young people in trouble that standard education and activities do not?’

Steve, who had done several prison terms before being sent to Huntercombe YOI in his late teens, explains he “learned nothing” in formal education classes but when he was given the opportunity to learn photography and web design, he stopped “arsing about, getting banged up on segregation and resisting all attempts to teach” him anything as he had in all the other prisons he had been in.

“It’s simple really. Education was dull, I didn’t see the point of what we were learning and I was full of all sorts of bad feelings from my childhood that got in the way of concentration. So when I ended up in prison one thing I didn’t want was more of what school had been.

“But they had a wonderful woman running a very special creative arts department in Huntercombe and she made it clear from day one that she wanted to give us the opportunity to do something we would actually enjoy. It was so different to the attitude I had encountered in other secure units and prisons I’d been in since I was 14. She was so enthusiastic about the things we could do with the arts. I’d always loved photography and computers and I got the opportunity to take photos and do design for the prison magazine that got me work with the Youth Justice Board magazine. Then I learned web design and because I loved it, I did well. Got higher NVQ and that qualification helped me work when I was released. I’ve stayed straight since.”

Of course not everyone can use their art training in such a direct manner but just as important is the way young people who have often had tough and damaging childhoods and who have learnt to survive by shutting down emotions and acting hard, are offered an experience in emotional intelligence through the arts. They learn through drama, music, visual art to express feelings and emotions that would normally remain bottled up, and to feel safe doing it. And one arts trainer told with delight of seeing young men and women whose body language and manner made plain they dealt with the world by being seen as the toughest on the block, talk with heart-aching openness about things that had happened in their lives, express remorse at crimes committed, at what they had done to their families. Tears usually held back at any price may be shed. And over and over these arts projects talk of the commitment, talent and enthusiasm that emerges. How, over time they see self-loathing and the distorted sense of shame that fuels much antisocial behaviour replaced with self-realisation, a sense of pride in themselves and other good feelings that are balm for battered souls.

The arts provision for youngsters who so often have grown up in areas where there is little or nothing to engage, stimulate and develop them in a healthy way, may well introduce them to activities that bring opportunities and enthusiasms they never imagined, and if this happens the aim is to get them back into mainstream education perhaps with a view to learning in order to pursue their new arts interest. Others run with what they learn and take it straight to the marketplace.

Charmion Togba who was sent to a YOI for crimes involving violence and guns has no doubt this was true of him. “I went to prison very angry and hostile towards society. I intended to keep my head down and get through the time then go back to the way of life I had dealing with the underworld and manufacturing crack cocaine.”

But on his second day inside he spotted the recording studio the enlightened prison governor had set up, along with getting instruments for a band because he was getting a lot of inmates who wanted to make music.
“I asked if I was allowed to use the studio and I was told I could if I also did my key skills education. It seemed a good bargain. And because I was good at recording I was given the job of training other inmates.”
When Charmion was due for release the prison helped him get funding from the Prince’s Trust to visit the prison once a week and keep training inmates. From this he set up his own company got contracts including one from the Home Office to do music work with children at risk in the community.

ANGELA NEUSTATTER
Neustatter, A (2003) Arts and Minds. Young Minds Issue 65. July/August 2003