BILLY BRAGG: JAIL GUITAR DOORS INITIATIVE; By Ellen Thompson

"I raise the money, I put it in the bank, I buy the guitars, I drive them to the prison and I give them to the people. It would be much more efficient if I had a staff to do this, but I would feel dreadful spending the money on anything other than instruments.

How did the idea for the Jail Guitar Doors Initiative come about?

You know a lot of stuff comes across my desk of people asking me to help them out, and often, its stuff that you really can’t get around to doing. But it seems with Malcolm’s [a drug alcohol rehabilitation officer in a small prison in the north of Dorset, which is the county where Billy lives in the west of England] request, half a dozen guitars to rehabilitate offenders, it was something positive that you could do and with music.

And as a guitar player, I could immediately understand how having an acoustic guitar in a prison situation would help to rehabilitate because I’ve done some work in local schools and it was clear that song writing led to confidence. And just in the sense of the idea of people listing to what you have to say and what you have to say is relevant. You know, song writing and performing legitimizes what you have to say. So I could see how it would help.

It was pretty small scale. Its not like he was asking me to save the world. Here’s a guy, he needs six guitars and he’s trying to do his work and I helped him out. I don’t know if he thought I was a rock star and had hundreds of guitars lying around. I’m not really. I think of guitars as tools, so I have as many as I need. I probably only got half a dozen.

What made you choose to turn the idea into an initiative?

Wanting to facilitate rehabilitation of offenders to cut the re offending rates, which are very high in the UK. Our prison system is over crowded and under funded. There’s too many people in the system and the officers and staff are not paid enough, so the opportunities for rehabilitation are not the highest priorities. It’s just managing the huge numbers of people in the system.

So as a taxpayer, I want a prison system that turns out people who are rehabilitated rather than people who are further criminalized. There’s perhaps too much retribution in our prison system here. I believe in punishment, don’t get me wrong- I think people should be punished and the punishment should fit the crime. But I would guess form the people I’ve been working with, that there are probably 25 percent of the people in our prison system who probably should be locked up forever. Who are a serious danger to the public. But the other 75 percent could probably be rehabilitated and that process needs encouragement.

So what I’m trying to do is make a contribution to public safety. And the mode of doing that is to supply to people who are already doing the work like Malcolm, the tools of which to do the job because there are people who are in the prison system who are willing to do this kind of work, but they just don’t have the funds to buy the equipment.

Since beginning the initiative, how many prisons have you worked with?

We have worked with I’d say 16 prisons and I myself have been to 13. And then there were the autonomous ones. I think there has been about half a dozen, maybe a dozen prisons in US that have received guitars through the DC connection.

What differences have you found when working with prisons in the US, opposed to prisons in the UK?

It’s a different system in the US. I think it might be a little more complicated. But I think they are doing a great job and the more funds the more work they’ll be able to do.

That’s been true in a number of prisons.  I actually did a three-day song-writing workshop in a prison last month. I normally don’t do it, because I just don’t have the time. But it was part of the Liverpool city of culture, which is the European city of culture this year. And Liverpool prison is the largest prison in Western Europe. And they asked me if I would come along as part of the city of culture events and take part in a song writing workshop with a gig at the end, and the men at Liverpool could take their guitars back to their cells. And that was really interesting. One of the guys, we wrote some songs together and we did a gig at the end and he says to me this was the first time he’s ever played sober.

And not only was the governor there, but the minister for prisons was there as well, who is the guy who is in control of prisons in England and Whales. And that was very positive for me, and I am hoping the word will spread out to other prisons and that it will be smiled upon from above if prison governors can facilitate it. Some prison governors can.
You know, you’d be surprised at how many are clash fans. You know, when you say you want to do something in memory of Joe strummer; they are a little bit more welcome. Joe opens a lot of doors. In fact, I saw the governor of Brixton prison, which is one of the largest prison in south London, down in the mud, he was in the audience.

As I say, there are a lot of things that come across my desk that id like to do, but I just haven’t got the time or I can't see how I can make a difference. This was one of those things were I was like; with a little bit of thought here I could actually make a difference. I mean Jail Guitar Doors is an awfully one man show, you know its just me. I raise the money, I put it in the bank, I buy the guitars, I drive them to the prison and I give them to the people. It would be much more efficient if I had a staff to do this, but I would feel dreadful spending the money on anything other than instruments.

What evidence do you have thus far that illustrates the effectiveness of the initiative?

The only evidence that I have is the letters people have sent to me. I have a very nice letter from a senior prison officer who works at a British jail in Lancaster Castle, which is a medieval castle in the north of England. And in that prison, it’s actually the prison officers who are leading the initiative. Because they play the guitars themselves, they understand how it can make a difference. So he wrote to me and said in 18 years of working in the prison service he’s never had a bond with the men in a way that he now feels he has with those guys, who are playing guitar with him.

So I don’t think it’s about anything you can measure, say cause and effect. But certainly in those experiences that I have had going into the prisons and talking when we are giving the guitars to the prisoner, I explain to the inmates what we are trying to achieve and why. Why we believe the guitars could make a difference. And their response is generally quite positive. We might sing a few songs. A lot of them haven’t heard of me, there’ll all a bit younger. And some of them have heard of Joe Strummer, but all of them know of Bob Marley. So we tend to sing a Bob Marley song. Usually “Redemption Song.” I also found “The Drugs Don’t Work,” by The Verve helps to break the ice sometimes.

Have you ever been asked, or told, what songs to not play with the prisoners? As well as what subjects to not discuss working with them?

No one has ever told them what they can or can’t play.  You know, I have to be in position of trust with the staff of the prison and not cause problems for them. If I don’t work with the prison officers, nothing will happen. So I have to accept their concerns of having a steel strung instrument in the prison, but generally those places where this has worked has tended to be smaller prisons, easily manageable and consequently its easy to get the type of protocols you need to use the guitar safely.”

Being that you have brought the initiative to male and female prisons, how do you find the initiative received at either?

Some of the most interesting places I’ve been are women’s prisons. There’s a completely different atmosphere in women’s prisons. I’m not absolutely convinced that women should really go to prison. Perhaps if they’ve committed murder or harmed anybody, but a lot of them are in prison because they have a drug problem, have received stolen goods or it might have been something their partner has done.

I think women suffer much more greatly by being incarcerated, partly because they are often the sole caregivers of the children so they lose the children if they go in prison. They often lose their housing. And the sort of macho glamour prison has for men, it doesn’t have that for women. There’s a hell of a lot of self-harm in women’s prisons in the UK.

I took some musical instruments to Styal prison just before Christmas and did a little gig there. The prison band played and I played a few songs. It was their Christmas party. I rang up a week later to see how it had been received and the woman there, who is the head of the education depart answered. I said, ‘ how did it go down,’ and she said
well after that show that night we didn’t have a single case of self harm.
 I said, ‘is that good then’ and she said, ‘that is absolutely exceptional.’  It just gives you some insight into the way prison affects women and raises the question whether or not it might be better to put the majority of women into custodial sentences rather than incarceration.

How do bands and everyday people get involved in raising funds?

The first people to ever do a benefit for Jail Guitar Doors was a group of people in Reading, which is town to the west of London and they completely autonomously put on a gig with my blessing and using the Jail Guitars names and I helped them raise the publicity. But they put on the all day gig and raised money for Reading prison, which is a big prison in their town. In fact, it’s where Oscar Wilde was sent to prison and wrote “The Ballot Of Reading Gaol.”

Also, quite a bit of money has been raised by Clash tribute bands, who last year were doing gigs to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer. So they got in touch with me and said, ‘look we’d like to do something to help raise money for JGD including one in Los Angeles. I had to send a friend over there with a guitar to raffle and they raffled our guitar and raised some funds.

But more so stateside, when I first set up JGD a guy named Joe Shade who is part of the DC Acoustic Collective said, ‘we’d like to do this in America.’ And I said, ‘well you’re welcome to do it Joe, but I have to let you know I have absolutely no connections with the corrective system in America. If you want to do it you’re going to have to make your own connections and find your own people in the system.’ And he’s been doing that.

With the money they raise they a guitar to a prison so they can start the work.

What other means have you taken to raise funds for the initiative?

Well last week I banked some checks from a memorial fund of a guy who was a Billy Bragg fan and a probation officer and he had tickets to come and see me in Sheffield and suddenly he died. So his family and friends instead of having his memorial be flowers they raised money for JGD. So they gave me a preliminary check of 1,500 pounds.
Its something that as a musician you kind of instinctively understand out of your work and you think about being in a position where you are deprived of your freedom and your family and you’re looking for something to help to focus your emotions and to pass the time. Anyone who has ever learned to play the guitar would understand how that works. That’s why many musicians make a contribution; it doesn’t take long to explain it to guitar players. They pretty much get it straight away.

When I came over last year to tour I was selling the Johnny Clash single at my gigs and I’ve been selling that in the UK as a Jail Guitar Doors benefit. In the US, I felt very strongly that the money that was raised in the US should be spent in the US so I gave over $1,000 that was raised to Joe and likewise the money that was raised in Los Angeles was spent in the US too.

The majority of people who raise funds are ordinary everyday people. And the industry has been quite supportive as well.