About

Music Therapy in Prisons

Music therapy programs are now used extensively in prisons as part of the rehabilitation process. Advocates of these programs point to the therapeutic nature of music, the positive outlet of energy and the stimulation of the creative processes as reasons to support the continuation and proliferation of music therapy. Such initiatives emphasize cooperation and provide a skill that can be used outside of prison. If not as a source of income, then as a productive hobby.

Music programs have traditionally been offered in all kinds of facilities, from lower-security to maximum-security prisons. These sessions include music lessons, playing and performing in groups and the opportunity to make recordings or perform live on radio and television. Some bands are allowed to travel outside the prison to perform. Others are limited to performing inside the institution for their convict peers only. Instruction varies from hiring professional music instructors to volunteers and prisoner teachers. Music programs can be part of larger overall arts programs that include theatre, dancing, and painting, while sometimes they are part of other self-help groups organised by the prisoners themselves.

Supporters of art and music programs believe that such classes restore a sense of humanity and safety that is vital to rehabilitation. The sense of completion and of contribution to the creation of something that society values can help inmates increase their self-esteem and recapture a sense of pride and satisfaction in themselves and their work. Other benefits can include relearning responsibility and discipline through individual and group practice and performance.

These programs have also been shown to reduce repeat offending rates. They provide an alternative to traditional education classes to which inmates who have had negative experience with schooling in the past may be averse. The open structure of these programs also helps them bring together diverse groups of individuals from different racial, ethnic, geographical and social backgrounds into a harmonious cooperative atmosphere. Music programs have even been used as a form of psychotherapy to develop the relationship between the therapist and the client. Therapists believe that music particularly helps those individuals who would otherwise have a difficult time communicating and expressing themselves.

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison"