This year, lockdown restrictions due to the global pandemic made many of us feel trapped. Some even protested such restrictions, citing personal liberty as a primary right. A common conversational refrain was the comparison of these restrictions with imprisonment. But, thinking critically, how much do we know about incarcerated life? Does this kind of language help or hurt any attempts to humanize inmates? Why is reframing this dynamic important?

These questions often unearth feelings of ignorance and even prejudice, but some select individuals are tackling them head-on. Mariannita Luzzati, a Brazilian painter and social activist, is one such individual. She sits down with Norm and Hayden Farrar on their podcast, “I Know This Guy,” to discuss her work providing art to prisoners to elicit introspection and awareness around prison reform issues, humanity and artistic expression.

Prefer listening to the story instead? Check out Mariannita’s account of how she’s using art as a means to bring about prison reform in this episode of “I Know This Guy” – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/how-can-music-change-world-w-marcelo-bratke-i-know/id1518495668?i=1000499672714

Mass Incarceration in the United States

The United States has a reputation for embracing the prison industrial complex, and incarceration statistics certainly uphold it. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are over 2.3 million incarcerated people across several systems of confinement: 

• State and federal prisons and prisons in U.S. territories
• Local and Indian Country jails
• Juvenile correctional facilities 
• Immigration detention centers
• Military prisons
• Civil confinement centers
• Psychiatric hospitals

The majority of these prisoners — nearly 1.3 million people — are housed in one of the country’s 1,833 state prisons, followed by over 631,000 people in local jails and 226,000 people in federal prisons. This means that nearly 0.7% of the U.S. population is held in a prison or a local jail. Put another way, for every 100,000 people in the United States, 698 are incarcerated.

Furthermore, U.S. imprisonment rates are anomalous on the global scale. While the United States has under 5% of the world’s population, it holds 20% of the world’s prisoners. 

Prison’s Deep Impact on American’s Lives

Even with these numbers at hand, people fortunate enough to distance their lives from prison or crime might not understand the profound impact mass incarceration has. In reality, there are 113 million adults in the United States, with an immediate family member who has been to or is currently in prison or jail. That’s just over a third of Americans who must regularly confront the criminal justice system and whose relationships have been permanently shaped by prison. 

The concept of prison reform is gaining momentum, not only in the United States but globally. 

Evaluating Prison Reform

Conversations around reform are often charged with emotion and loaded with misinformation. It can be a challenge to separate fact from myth, evidence from guesswork. To that end, the United Nations outlines the following considerations in the attempt to overhaul the current systems of imprisonment internationally:

• Human rights: Each prisoner should maintain all fundamental human rights beyond their right to liberty; prisons should respect and provide access to these rights across the board. Currently, prisoners face regular discrimination, neglect and abuse.
• Imprisonment and poverty: Prisoners are disproportionately from low-income, at-risk demographics. This means that the families of prisoners are often left with drastically reduced income, and as such, are only more susceptible to poverty. Furthermore, prisoners face enormous costs when released and may face employment scarcity. In this way, prisons contribute directly to the cycle of future imprisonment.
• Public health consequences: The prevalence of disease, infection, psychiatric disorder and malnutrition are significantly higher inside prisons than in the general public. This poses acute challenges for national health resources.
• Social impact: Separating prisoners from their families and communities creates a deep rift in their social relationships. Moreover, the people on the outside must live without their relatives and friends.
• Cost: There is an extreme national cost to house, feed and sustain prisoners throughout their sentence. According to the Marshall Project, the United States alone spends $80 billion annually on prisons. The worldwide cost represents an overwhelming burden on global finances.

There is no question that the American prison system requires urgent reform, although it’s tough for the average person — someone unaffected by prison — to know where to begin. Moreover, beyond complete reform, how can an everyday civilian better understand the footprint of incarceration? How can we learn about prisoners’ lives to help improve them?

Social Justice: Luzzati’s Work in Prisons and With the Public

This is where Luzzati’s work comes into play, as she strives to answer such difficult questions. Together with her husband, concert pianist Marcelo Bratke, Luzzati created the Cinemúsica project to bring art and music to Brazilian prisons. The project features:

An immersive, multimedia concert
Piano performances by Bratke
Music written by Villa-Lobos and other notable Brazilian composers who were inspired by nature
Images and video footage of Brazilian landscapes, as chosen by Luzzati
The opportunity for every prisoner to view, react to and appreciate contemporary art and classical music

Cinemúsica Inside Prisons

“I always wanted to do something with prisons in Brazil, and so I created Cinemúsica to bring nature inside of the prisons,” Luzzati says. “We created this concert where I had this huge screen in the background of a room in one of the prisons…Marcelo would play pieces by Villa-Lobos inspired by nature and in the background. I would project the forest of the Amazon or the Pantanal, the seascapes.” 

Healing Through Nature

Weaving the beauty of natural images with music and contrasting them against the hard walls of confinement, Luzzati has made a powerful statement about the restricted lives of Brazilian prisoners. She aims to do her piece of the work that today’s prisons are simply not equipped to accomplish: heal incarcerated individuals, restore positive thought patterns and behaviors and, finally, prepare them for life outside their cells.

“I believe if you don’t have contact with nature, you cannot recuperate yourself and be reintegrated again into society. So nature, I think it’s a very important step for you to regrow feelings and rethink life,” she explains. Without her and Bratke’s exhibit, it would be immensely challenging to inculcate the restorative virtues of the natural world into the prison environment.

Luzzati was thrilled to learn that her concert achieved its desired effects with prisoners, even if just for the short term. “They were much calmer and focused on their jobs there…we received many letters from them after that, saying how important it was for them,” she explains.

Cinemúsica Beyond Prisons

Luzzati’s scope is not limited to prisons, though. “We had this experience in 10 prisons in the state of Sao Paulo. After that, we did this concert in many theaters as well, but with the normal public, not prisoners,” she says. 

The Cinemúsica exhibit became a documentary that aired at several international film festivals and won an award at the Sarajevo Winter Festival in 2014. Furthermore, Cinemúsica has been performed in concert in over 50 concert halls across Brazil, the United States, England, Bosnia, Germany and Switzerland.

Her intention with the large-scale distribution of Cinemúsica was to encourage civilians to ponder the state of prisons in Brazil and worldwide. If they could relate to a prisoner’s life through experiencing her concert, perhaps they could better understand the imperative of prison reform. 

Luzzati remains aware of standard biases against prisoners. The typical mentality is to distance oneself from individuals in prison rather than understand them. In this way, Luzzati’s work brings to light just how far we have to go in genuinely granting humanity to imprisoned people.

Art and Social Justice Activism

How does art, then, help the greater public humanize prisoners? How does it help prisoners reclaim their humanity when the typical mentality withholds it? 

Sharing the Artist Title

In prison, the access to education, training and work is restricted — if not barred — and is controlled more or less by prison bureaucracy. Prisoners must watch as the world progresses around them while they remain stifled, static and suppressed. 

Humanize the Numbers

Humanize the Numbers is a project from the University of Michigan that brings photography students into state prisons. The project works to share the title of artist among the students and inmates, who act as artistic directors. The inmates can tell the students what they want photographed on the outside and instruct the students on the different composition elements. At the project’s conclusion, the inmates own the rights to their final photographs.

By working together in this socially engaged way, the students and inmates work towards the same goal, collaborating at every stage of the process. This necessitates respect between parties, and students often come away feeling better able to relate to prisoners. Moreover, it removes the power dynamic typical of “outside world” intrusions on the prison dynamic. Prisoners get a rare seat at the table and are treated as contributors, not helpless recipients of benevolent intervention.

Representation for Prisoners

Another project out of the University of Michigan is the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP). PCAP works to humanize inmates through art in the following ways:

• An annual exhibit showcasing art made by hundreds of prisoners among Michigan’s 26 correctional facilities
• 100% of the money from sales of the exhibit’s pieces is sent back to the inmates 
• An array of art programs for inmates across Michigan prisons, including a literary review, creative writing classes and visual art workshops
• A podcast, “While We Were Away,” to give formerly incarcerated individuals a platform to share their stories
• The Linkage Project, which uses art to help inmates reintegrate into society

Each element of PCAP serves to offer prisoners a chance to share their voice with an ill-informed public. Much of the prisoners’ artwork depicts daily life inside the correctional centers. Some of the art is surreal, while some is photorealistic. Through every piece in the exhibition of art, the inmate’s unique story is granted an audience, and the viewer learns a little more about what makes each inmate human.

Better Lives Inside and Outside Prison

The access to creativity, nature and other crucial resources provides so much more than  comfort; it offers opportunity. It follows, then, that prisoners who have access to art workshops or who participate in an art program tend to lead improved, more developed lives, both within prison and outside it. 

Consider the following findings:

• 74% of participants in California’s Arts-in-Corrections Program had clean records after exiting prison, compared to 49% of non-participants, according to an article from Rutgers’ Institute for Research on Women
• The same article reported that after two years outside prison, only 31% of participants had reoffended, compared to 58% of non-participants
• An 89% decrease in in-prison infractions resulted from participation in the Actor’s Gang Prison Project (which offers theatrical arts programs to inmates), according to the Washington Post
• A review paper from the University of San Francisco cited that arts programming in prisons cultivates empathy, discipline, enhanced emotional self-regulation and positive behavioral changes

Some numerous other studies and reports point to the benefits of arts programs for people in prison. These findings show that the collective results of creative expression, artistic education and interdisciplinary training lay the groundwork for humanizing inmates.

The Final Composition: Artwork, Humanity and Prison Reform

In the face of our temporary lockdowns this year, we each had a taste of the restricted lives that millions of people across the world endure every day. There has never been a better chance to think deeply about the effects that our current incarceration system has on the prospects of leading a normal, humanized life.

With that in mind, Luzzati and Bratke know the value of their work and hope to continue improving the lives of inmates, despite immediate challenges. PCAP and the University of Michigan have adapted to pandemic measures, too. Their annual exhibit was held entirely online this spring.

“For 20 years…we met murderers,” Bratke says, “…and it was amazing to see the impact of music and art through that project, and very touching. I never had, in my entire life, the sensation of music and art being so strong, in terms of liberating people that are suffering that don’t have liberty in their lives; the impact and importance of music on that level — that was shocking to me.” 

Though we are still a long way from total prison reform, it is clear that we must invest in creative programs in prisons. We must explore the personal narratives of imprisoned people and champion the goal of humanizing people inside and outside the correctional system.

To learn more about Luzzati and Bratke’s work and find more information about social justice, listen to the “I Know This Guy” podcast on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/i-know-this-guy-with-norm-farrar/id1518495668. Farrar’s podcast brings the most interesting people he knows onto his platform, where they can discuss their personal successes, life’s work and most insightful lessons.