Abstract
Prisons of Creativity makes a distinctive intervention in the discourse around arts in the American penal context, advocating for a national creative carceral policy that promises large-scale societal benefits by harnessing the creative potential of America's prison population. Grounded in a brief but accessible analysis of the intellectual property clause of the Constitution of the United States, John R. Whitman's central argument rests on the idea that copyright – understood as a ‘gift to the nation’ akin to a civil right – can and should play a role in the movement to reform the U.S. carceral system. He proposes that creators in prison should be able to readily secure intellectual property protection, not merely intellectual property rights. A more inclusive approach to intellectual property would, the author claims, serve to promote and incentivise creativity in prison, and in doing so, bring about various internal rehabilitative outcomes, while generating commercial opportunities that stimulate external value. To this end, Whitman suggests how a collaborative framework that involves a range of existing for-profit and non-profit arts organisations, carceral facilities and prison education providers, could ‘tap’ an underutilised creative seam for a competitive global economy.
The initial chapters of the book set out the author's personal motivation and two-pronged mission to better protect the ‘human compulsion to create’ for marginalised and underserved communities, and to establish an infrastructure and market for carceral arts. The current barriers encountered by the prison population around intellectual property are framed as not only unconstitutional, but also indicative of why incarcerated creators lack the drive to truly innovate – to make their work useful beyond expressive value – because there is no conceivable tangible benefit or economic return to them. Little wonder then, that the government is also disinclined to write policy supporting prison-based arts, when they are deemed as yielding no (market) value to the nation. For Whitman, this is a missed opportunity for the nation's creative ecosystem – a staggering loss culturally and financially – which is especially wasteful, given that prison ‘stokes’ creativity, albeit unintentionally.
Chapter 3 charts an evolution of the modern prison as a series of successive reforms and interventions that (perversely) determine the carceral environment as creatively fertile. This history also shows how creative endeavours and outputs are, and have always been, an important means of coping with and communicating the hostile experience of prison, as well as personal and political struggles (Chamberlen and Bernatek, 2027; Fleetwood, 2020). However, Whitman's suggestion that prison, in some ways, benefits creativity sits somewhat uncomfortably with a more critical understanding of the role of the arts in relation to confinement and deprivation more widely. In particular, Prisons of Creativity does not align with abolitionist concerns, nor does it seek to address the failures and exploitative character of carceral systems. Instead, it situates the challenge of the contemporary prison experience around questions of – what to do with people in prison? and how to pass the time better behind bars? Lengthy sentences and high rates of incarceration are left unquestioned and unchallenged, and at times discussed as favourable to the prospect of a creative carceral policy; in so doing, it misses an opportunity to explore how artmaking in prisons can engage with alternative visions of non-punitive justice.
Chapters 4 and 5 home in on the various ways creativity emerges and can be evidenced in carceral settings. The fourth chapter provides a survey of (primarily) literary ‘in print’ examples of creativity from prison, from Boethius to Piper Kerman, that are sub-divided into categories of privileged transgressors (political prisoners), and prisoners ‘born into deprivation’. These short accounts traverse a range of historical and political contexts, and geographies. For students or readers arriving anew to the topic of the arts and imprisonment this is a useful, if somewhat eclectic, overview. By contrast, the fifth chapter is focused in the present moment, discussing the activities of 27 currently and formerly serving artists, writers and musicians based in the United States. Whitman conducted interviews with approximately half these artists, and excerpts narrate personal journeys with art before, during and after incarceration, alongside black and white illustrations of original work; biographical information and relevant weblinks are also provided. These more intimate accounts add a welcome level of depth to the argument developed in the book.
If these artists and artworks represent the supply side of Whitman's proposed national creative carceral policy, then the facilitators and organisations behind efforts to bring arts into prison represent the means of dissemination for creative products originating from America's state and federal prisons: As with extracted coal, the fruits of creativity must then need a means of distribution to consumers. Here I propose a nationwide framework for creativity, a supply chain …. (p.7)
Although Whitman's unique thesis is explored in relation to carceral regimes in the United States, Prisons of Creativity openly seeks a more international audience – this is a much-needed intervention in the field of arts and punishment. From the outset, creativity is established as a ‘universal human impulse’ enmeshed with longer global and colonial histories of punishment, detention and servitude from Plato to the supermax. As such, the text can be read more broadly as an effort to promote and ‘institutionalize creativity’ as a core feature of all contemporary carceral models, and the framework itself is intended to be replicable and scalable beyond the United States.
By the end of the book, Whitman hopes that the reader will share his conviction for a national creative carceral policy, and ‘spur progress towards such an initiative’ (p. 121). For some audiences, especially policymakers, politicians, criminal justice professionals and organisations seeking a strategic step change in policy around arts engagement in prison, the overall entrepreneurial and instructive approach will be welcome. It can be seen as constructing a bridge between the purposes of detention and creativity, that upholds public safety and broader social justice objectives (Eiden, 2025). However, Whitman's future-oriented model, limited by logics enacted within existing systems, also runs the risk of containing and confining creativity as an instrument of punishment. Behind a benevolent façade (Cheliotis, 2014), Whitman's proposal primarily aids administrators – whom he terms the ‘superintendents of creativity’ – and applies an extractive methodology even as it claims – and perhaps hopes – to enhance prisoner rights. Artistic innovation is presented in Prisons of Creativity as affirming humanity in an otherwise dehumanising system, yet its entanglement in punitive systems and ideologies should be approached critically and with caution. Nevertheless, the book advances an original and provocative argument that will hopefully stoke debate and bring attention to an important and often neglected area of penal policy.