When Claudia Peña brought the show “Lyrics from Lockdown” to Houston, she saw that the crowd was mostly older white people and worried there could be some walkouts. She even positioned herself in a chair by the door so she could talk to anybody who walked out about why they had done so. But it turns out there was no need. Not only did no one walk out, but the crowd was energized. In this excerpt from an interview with Bioneers, Peña talks about the power of stories to change hearts and minds and why she stopped relying on statistics to discuss incarceration and prison abolition.

Peña is the executive director of For Freedoms, an artist collective that centers art and creativity as a catalyst for transformative connection and collective liberation. She serves on the faculty at the UCLA School of Law and is the founding co-director of the UCLA Center for Justice. The Center runs the Prison Education Program, which creates innovative courses that enable faculty and students to learn from and alongside currently incarcerated participants.

BIONEERS: What are some examples of the art and media you’ve created around the issues of incarceration in prisons? 

CLAUDIA: I’ve been working on the issue of prison abolition since the late ‘90s. I used to be really committed to numbers and data and statistics, because they were so obvious and overwhelming. I was convinced all anybody needed to see was these numbers. They needed to know how much we were spending on prisons in comparison to universities. They needed to know how much we were spending on keeping somebody in prison — which is $132,000 in California — and know that it would cost half that amount to send somebody to the most expensive private university in California. I thought those numbers would make them agree with me. But I was wrong. 

Stats are actually not that convincing to people. Or they might be in the moment, but they don’t really motivate people to do something. I realized that storytelling, where you can reach people’s hearts and minds — which is the oldest way we’ve ever shared knowledge and wisdom in the existence of humanity — is the thing that really can get people to move in particular ways.

The most recent and actually one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever worked on is a show called “Lyrics from Lockdown.” It is a show that uses comedy and hip hop, calypso, spoken word — all sorts of different styles of music and poetry — to tell two parallel stories of men who were wrongfully incarcerated. One man was incarcerated while he was a student at Harvard Law, and the other one still sits in a prison in Texas now, 30 years after being locked up at the age of 17 for a crime he didn’t commit. The show has been written by Bryonn Bain and workshopped in prisons and jails all over the country for over a decade. It’s an incredible show, and it’s actually going to be going to Broadway this year. 

We did a southern tour of it last year. We went to Houston, Birmingham, Atlanta. And I have to tell you something funny about what happened in Houston. I’m not that familiar with Texas, but everybody I know from Houston in my own network is Black. So when we went to Houston, I had just assumed we were going to have a Black crowd. I think the time we had done it before then in its fullness was at the Apollo Theatre, and it was an incredible crowd. We got a standing ovation and an incredibly enthusiastic response. We got to Houston, and I sort of assumed it was going to be the same thing, and when I looked out at the audience, it was pretty white and pretty old. I went back to Bryonn and the three musicians, and I was like, “Okay, we have a very different audience out there; prepare yourselves; I don’t know what it’s going to be like.” The man who we’d worked with at that venue said they get walkouts from some shows, so we should be prepared; some people might walk out; don’t take it personally. 

So I decided to sit in the audience right next to the door so I could have a sense of walkouts and the demographics. And I thought, maybe I’ll walk out with them and ask them why they’re leaving, just to understand. Not only were there no walkouts, but there was, again, a rousing standing ovation, an incredibly enthusiastic response. I’ll admit that I had assumed it would not be the case, because I had made my own assumptions about the audience. It was just great to see that the story is universal enough. 

The writing is unparalleled, and Bryonn’s performance is incredible. But the story is universal because it touches on family and love, friendship and resilience, and challenges. And, of course, it touches on the criminal legal system and the injustice and the horrors of being in prison, but it does it in a way that, for some reason at the end of the show, you leave feeling pumped up. You want to go do something. That’s the energy I’m looking for; that’s the response that I want. All my little charts and statistics from the late ‘90s and the early aughts didn’t quite do it, but a show that’s headed to Broadway is nailing it. 

BIONEERS: When there was this rousing response, and people were ready to go take action, where were you all directing them? Where were you telling them to go?

CLAUDIA: I’m so glad you asked this question. Everywhere we do a show, we work with local community organizations to be in the lobbies, so they’re ready to gather all of that energy and galvanize. Whether it’s just signing up for a listserv or getting people to come to your next event, or being able to educate people on the local political issues. 

We’ve had voter registration tables at some of the shows. We plan to do the same exact thing on Broadway, in a way that Broadway has never seen. We’re connected to over a hundred community organizations that will be in the lobby. We’ll have artwork from formerly incarcerated folks, maybe even currently incarcerated folks in the lobby as well. In our talkbacks after the show, we’ll feature advocates, formerly incarcerated people, perhaps even some well-known names that really care about these issues in order to continue to direct people on exactly what to do. Right now, while you feel this way, sitting in this seat, what you need to do next is X. It may be to vote on a local policy, it may be everybody’s gotta go storm a particular governmental agency. Perhaps for many people in the audience, the way that they participate is they fund things, and so perhaps they will donate to the community organizations. There are a lot of different directions people can take their participation, and every single one of them is needed.

BIONEERS: How do you respond to people who are concerned about the concept of abolition of prisons?

CLAUDIA: There are a few ways to take that. When people say, “I can’t imagine the abolition of prisons; what are we going to do with all the murderers and the rapists?” First: You can’t end violence with violence, and the prison industrial complex is an incredibly violent institution. Second: I want people to understand that for those who cause harm, it’s a result of harm they’ve experienced that’s been left unaddressed. We would do much better by providing resources for people to heal — to do the work so they can reconnect to their own humanity. Our society would benefit more from people having a healthier mental and spiritual state than it would from sending people into these cages where, generally speaking, they become even more dehumanized. The experience of dehumanization as a result of being someone incarcerated — oftentimes there’s a lot of violence and scarcity in these spaces — and it affects people’s ability to show up in a more humanized way.

I also like to point out that this way of addressing harm using punishment on the scale of mass incarceration, in the way that it exists in this country, is very new. It has not been the reality for most of human existence, and it certainly wasn’t the case on these lands since the beginning of time. Mass incarceration on this level has really only existed for the last 40 years. Incarceration in the way that we know it in the United States has existed for maybe even less than 100 years. If something has not existed for that long, it’s not a foregone conclusion that this is what’s needed or that this is even working. 

There’s also a lot of literature showing that being incarcerated doesn’t necessarily help you get to a better space before you get released. Programming does. Access to therapy, access to group, access to education. All of those things do help, and those things can exist outside of carceral facilities. You don’t need to access those programs by going to prison or jail; they can just exist in the community. Those are the things, along with education, that help people get to a place where they can see that there are different paths, different opportunities, and different responsibilities for them. 

With education, it’s wild what we have seen with recidivism rates. The average recidivism rate in this country is 65%. People who go to prison have about a 65% chance of going back, which is a terrible failure rate. But that’s exactly what the system is set up for, so in that way, it’s a great success rate. Go them. But with each type of education that you get, the recidivism rate drops significantly. Getting vocational education, and then getting an AA. Once you get your BA, it drops to 6%. And, of course, with a Master’s degree, it’s zero percent. So if people want folks who have been incarcerated to not end up back there, education is the best thing, not more incarceration. 

I also want to note the reasons why people go to prison and who is being put in prison. There are a lot of people in prison for use of drugs. The use of drugs is usually self-medication for trauma that people have experienced. Overwhelmingly, the folks who are in prison for using drugs are Indigenous and Black people and poor white folks. But the people who do the kind of harm that affects thousands, potentially millions of people, like financial fraud, white collar crime, poisoning our rivers. Those are real crimes. They’re crimes against the land, crimes against humanity. They are awful things that will have an effect on thousands, millions, for a long time. Those folks are not being incarcerated. Now I’m an abolitionist, so I am not advocating that those people should go to prison. I am advocating for people to look more closely because there are a lot of folks out there who think people in prison deserve to be there. You should be asking yourself: why do you have that perspective?