The Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment

This book focuses on the arts as an alternative means by which to approach imprisonment. Integrating the most up-to-date, high-quality research conducted on both sides of the Atlantic with a variety of cross-disciplinary theoretical traditions, the work covers three main areas: - the ways in which the state authorities may deploy the arts in general, and arts-based prison programmes in particular, as subtle means of control. - the use of the arts, both inside and outside prisons, as a means of resisting the inherently harsh prison system. - arts-based schemes in prisons. Discussions here range from the problems faced by arts practitioners in prisons, to the effectiveness of arts-based schemes as a tool of therapy and individual empowerment in prisons, to the methodological pitfalls of pertinent research. The chapters complement each other in a unique way, building into a coherent whole. In particular, the book brings together a number of well-established academics and up-and-coming scholars, combining perspectives from criminology, sociology, social psychology, art therapy and education, empirical as well as theoretical.