My parents taught arts in several prisons -- my mother did theatre, my father creative writing. Two of the people they taught actually went on, partly through my parents' influence, to have careers as writers (one as a tv scriptwriter, the other writing short stories). One of them had been a recidivist (car theft mainly) since his teens, but after he started writing he never went back, and in fact, as well as writing, ended up running halfway houses and doing social work with at-risk youth. The other is still working in tv as far as I know & has won some awards.
It's not the only way out -- another man who appeared in a few plays my mother put on, but had no real artistic or intellectual interests, has pulled his life together very nicely as a long-haul truckdriver (still drops in on my mother if he's passing through town). But I really do think that my parents did some substantial good with their prison work.
Unfortunately, the climate of the times has changed, and arts programs for prisoners now tend to be seen as "coddling" or something like that, rather than a way of helping people imagine other lives for themselves.
With regard to this specific case, given that Rader is clearly not ever getting out of prison, I can't see what conceivable purpose is being served by denying him pencils and paper, which is what the phrase certainly sounds like. I suspect they're worried about him selling his "story" to newspapers.
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Date: 2005-08-19 03:39 pm (UTC)It's not the only way out -- another man who appeared in a few plays my mother put on, but had no real artistic or intellectual interests, has pulled his life together very nicely as a long-haul truckdriver (still drops in on my mother if he's passing through town). But I really do think that my parents did some substantial good with their prison work.
Unfortunately, the climate of the times has changed, and arts programs for prisoners now tend to be seen as "coddling" or something like that, rather than a way of helping people imagine other lives for themselves.
With regard to this specific case, given that Rader is clearly not ever getting out of prison, I can't see what conceivable purpose is being served by denying him pencils and paper, which is what the phrase certainly sounds like. I suspect they're worried about him selling his "story" to newspapers.