In Arts in Corrections, the author—a poet, translator and teacher—takes readers on a chronological journey through an annotated selection of 24 of his own publications from 1981 to 2014 which recount his experiences teaching, consulting and documenting US arts programs in prisons, jails and juvenile facilities.
Anyone interested in corrections and arts-in-corrections will be drawn in by the poetic sensibility Hillman brings to his writing. Readers will gain a historical and personal perspective not only into correctional arts programming in the US over the last 40 years, but also the institutional transformations in policy, culture, populations, economics, and the criminological mission expansion into other institutional settings like K-12 education. Original essays, articles, monographs and poems are interspersed with recent annotations to deliver not only a top-down view of the correctional system but also the author’s personal journey of "discouragement and hope" from work conducted in approximately 200 adult and juvenile facilities in 30 states and six countries.
This comprehensive book is essential reading for a broad cross-section of international readers interested in and involved in the arts-in-corrections field. With two million individuals behind bars in the US at any given time, the profile of arts programs in prisons and jails is rising and interest in criminal-justice matters more generally is increasing. This includes not only arts-in-corrections professionals, policy makers, students, researchers, advocates and academics, but professionals in multiple other fields as well as the general public.