Arts Program Helps Inmates

Arts in Corrections is a state-funded program that exists at every California prison to expose inmates to art, music, literature and the performing arts in hopes of providing them skills and interests that will generate a more positive focus when they return home.

Deborah Tobola, who runs the program at the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, said the annual budget is “very small” and provides mainly for hiring teachers to come in and work with interested prisoners each week. Occasionally they bring in performers: The Drifters did a concert there last December; a group of poets visited in April.

“Arts in Corrections helps inmates, through the discipline of fine arts, leave prison and not come back,” Tobola said, pointing to a study showing that prison inmates who get involved in the program have lower recidivism rates than those who don’t.