Aesthetics as Necessary for Prison Reform

On the IMDb website, the highest rated film is The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Audiences rally behind Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) and Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding (played by Morgan Freeman). When it comes to real prisoners, however, a stark difference seems more normal, as people adopt an out of sight and out of mind mentality, if not utter hostility. Incarcerated persons are viewed as less than human, which is exemplified by the way that prisons and the system are designed. And we hide behind slogans like “If you do the crime, then you do the time.”

Prison became the primary form of punishment in the United States in the 1970s, which resulted in what is now called mass incarceration. Regardless of someone’s belief about the purpose of prison—retribution, deterrence, reformation—everyone should think it is better that people, once out of prison, not return. We all have a vested interest in less crime. Also important, fewer people in jail requires fewer tax dollars to pay for their time in prison. It costs billions of tax dollars to run the prisons, both federal and state, in the United States. However, the United States continues to have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world at around 76%. Norway, on the other hand, boasts one of the lowest recidivism rates at about 20%. They’re doing something right.

Incarcerated persons are kept or at least limited from basic human goods, like knowledge, healthcare, sociability, and aesthetic experience. Prisons ban a lot of books, but even beyond that, incarcerated persons don’t have access to many books that are not banned or other educational programs. Prisons are frequently slow to act on providing healthcare, often worsening someone’s health condition. While incarcerated persons may talk to each other during some moments throughout the day, facets of prison life, such as solitary confinement, prevent sociability, sometimes for years. Finally, anyone who ponders what life would be like without positive aesthetic features could look to prisons.

Prisons are Ugly

Others have written on some of these negative aspects, but I want to explore an often overlooked aspect of prisons: their ugliness. Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet and formerly incarcerated person, at a public conversation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA once said, “There’s nothing beautiful in a prison.” On the surface, this lack might be perceived as inconsequential because aesthetics is not important for human survival. Yet recent research in psychology and neuroscience has begun to confirm what philosophers have long proclaimed, that beauty is valuable for human well-being. Most of these studies have focused only on the built environment for people who are not incarcerated, but the principle ideas can easily be applied to prisons, which offer unique insight into the effects of spaces without any positive aesthetic components. 

Prisons epitomize built environments that require functionality, but this should not be understood as overshadowing any need for positive aesthetic features. The two work together. When entering prison, according to neuroscientists, your brain enters a state of fight or flight, which leads to regular (or even continuous) anxiety. If something threatens you outside of prison, you could run away or you could fight and hopefully escape, but then your body eventually goes back to its regular state. In prison, one cannot run away and fighting is prohibited, so your body stays in fight or flight mode, remaining in a state of vigilance. This can structurally alter someone’s brain and cause permanent damage. Once released from prison, people need to re-learn how to behave without a constant influx of cortisol. This may explain why formerly incarcerated persons can’t seem to relax. And it explains why some people develop or are diagnosed with PTSD or depression after they are released.

Since it is not the lack of aesthetics only that causes these problems, aesthetics does not provide a magical solution that would wholly solve these problems either. But aesthetics should be part of any solution. What does this mean? Aesthetic experience, according to some philosophers, is one of the basic drives for human behavior and action. We seek out aesthetic experiences from small things like enjoying a flower on our daily walk to more acute experiences like the view from a mountain vista or an amazing painting at a museum. We spend time, money, and energy for these daily experiences and, beyond that, to travel around the country and world for experiences of beauty. Prison deprives people not only of their locomotion but also of their personal aesthetic of grooming and clothing themselves along with the aesthetics of their personal space, namely their cell. 

People Need Aesthetic Experiences

Aesthetic experience is one of the core things that makes us human, and to deprive someone of this basic drive is to push them toward their animal behaviors. People sometimes claim that prisoners act like animals; however, the truth is that we all act like animals on occasion when we are put in fight or flight mode or deprived of basic needs and drives. Anger, for instance, causes us to act before we think, as Dan Mager explains in Psychology Today, which sometimes shows up as rage. If we acted like this all the time, people might call us animals as well. Other than people who have a physical issue with regulating their brain states, most people go back to their regular state. Or, another example, think about the harsh reaction a loved one might give when they are “hangry.” Now imagine if they were placed in that state constantly. Anger alters our ability to control ourselves, and Mager notes that “stress is a common contributing factor to anger.” If your environment holds you in a constant state of stress, then anger is often present as well, which curbs our ability to act calmly and rationally. 

While prisons restrict people’s rights, they should not deprive them of the core aspects of their humanity. The aspect I noted above is aesthetic experience, which could play an important role in prison reform. One facet of aesthetics involves making art in prisons. In Nicole Fleetwood’s brilliant book, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, she describes the benefits, processes, and restrictions of making art in prison. Portrait artists enable incarcerated persons to connect with family members in a visual way that isn’t always possible with the restrictions of prison because they don’t have access to cameras. Beyond the more practical function of recreating someone’s likeness through drawing or painting, artwork adds an aesthetic touch to the drabness that disseminates through the prison environment. But the space itself is also a hindrance.

Light and color affect our mental health. Being deprived of these natural ingredients for our well-being leads to someone’s diminishment, leading to stress, anger, and possibly violence. What do we expect after removing core elements of people’s humanity, that they would remain dignified? Light and color seem like fairly easy things to add to a prison. Windows, for example, could be larger to let in more natural light, while maintaining narrowness to prevent people from being able to pass through them. But some cells, especially solitary confinement, lack natural light completely. And prison walls are painted, so it’s curious why the result is always dreariness. Even if the selection of colors needs to be controlled for various reasons, dull colors choices are not the only option. As prison removes people’s autonomy almost completely, a small way to get some back could be to give them choices (even limited options) of what colors to paint their cells.

Uniformity amidst diversity, for philosopher Francis Hutcheson, is another foundational principle of beauty. Uniformity is necessary to provide stability and consistency to our lives, but too much of it becomes boring and leaves us without stimulation. While diversity is necessary to alleviate boredom and provide interest, too much diversity or flux leaves us in a state of chaos. So, these two aspects temper each other to provide a balance between excessive boredom and deficient stimulation. But prisons consist of uniformity to a maddening degree. Boring colors, boring shapes, and a lack of natural elements, including light, decay the human spirit to such a degree that they are robbed of a piece of their humanity. So, we shouldn’t wonder why some people become either violent or enter an extreme state of repose, even after they are released.

The Prison System is more than Incarcerated Persons

Some people may object that people in prisons are there to be punished, so we shouldn’t care. However, the phrase “people in prisons” includes more than just the incarcerated persons. Shane Bauer, in his book American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment, recalled an interaction with a prisoner, who observed that the guards worked twelve hour shifts. They nodded that it was true. So, this prisoner commented that the guards were serving half his time with him. This comment immediately jumped out to me because we should also care about the environment of the prison for the well-being of the guards. Prison guards quickly lose pieces of themselves and their well-being in their work. Different research studies conclude that correctional officers risk high stress levels, burnout, and other mental health consequences just by going to work. Shane Bauer, for instance, reported himself being affected negatively by his undercover role at the prison in only a few months, though he made it about six months total. 

Aesthetic considerations should be employed as part of an aggregate solution for changing the prison system. The main aspect of prison life that allows some degree of  aesthetic experience consists of prisoners who create artwork, which is a precarious endeavor at best. We should correctly wonder why aesthetic experience is absent in the design and life of prisons, once we realize that aesthetic experience is a basic motivation of humans for their well-being. While prison reform surely demands a multi-pronged approach, positive aesthetic features should become a key prong in the overall strategy to reduce recidivism and help incarcerated persons maintain their humanity, so they can succeed in life after prison. As I’ve said before, aesthetics and functionality, when combined, provide better results than functionality alone.