Music Behind Bars: Confessions of a Former Prison Music Therapist

“A long, long time ago, I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while”

-from “American Pie,” Don McLean

Is Taylor Swift’s music “blowing the blues away” in prisons?

The news is alive with the sound of music! (I had to. I promise I’ll go easy on you with the music cliches after this section). The stories of music reaching into the hearts of people behind bars are everywhere you look. Major news outlets like NPR, The New Yorker, and Billboard are reporting on how music positively impacts the lives of incarcerated people.

Joe Garcia, who is currently incarcerated in a California state prison, is the human behind the moving essay about how Taylor Swift’s music has inspired his life behind bars, writing “Her music makes me feel that I’m still part of the world I left behind.” Swift’s devoted fans—designated “Swifties” by the masses—have been deeply moved by Garcia’s essay.

Indeed, as a board-certified music therapist, I’ve seen firsthand how music—including but certainly not limited to Swift’s—can connect people to places seemingly out of their reach while also tethering them to themselves in a way that other modalities can’t. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Most of us speak the language of music. It’s no wonder that music is “blowing the blues away” in prisons, much like Johnny Cash wants the lonesome whistle to do in his famous song “Folsom Prison Blues.”

As a former prison music therapist, I have personally witnessed the impact of music behind bars.

But does music belong behind bars?

Have you ever had a terrible day and turned your favorite song on at full blast to cheer you up? Have you ever lost someone close to you and listened to an important song to feel connected to them? Do you listen to music to help you get into a meditative state or sing hymns to feel connected to something bigger than you? Do you have a playlist that pumps you up or calms you down? If so, you’ve used music to support, or perhaps even shift, your emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual states.

Many people view music as a human imperative and can relate to its ability to support us, inspire us, comfort us, change us, and yes, even rehabilitate us. NPR reports that the public’s response to the recent stories on music in prisons has been favorable. Many of us see deprivation of music as cruel and unusual. Where there are humans, there should be music—and that includes prisons.

The archaic “lock them up and throw away the key” model of criminal justice achieves little. It fills our prisons to the point of overcrowding, and it creates dangerous working environments and burnout for the staff who work there. In non-rehabilitative correctional environments, people are commonly released back into our communities with minimal coping skills (and often increased frustration and decreased executive functioning), making successful re-entry highly improbable. Conversely, creating an environment of rehabilitation has been shown to be a much more effective way to support our society.

In California (where I live) the California Department of Corrections officially added the “R” to their name in 2004, making it the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, based on the evidence that punishment alone achieves little for a society. As such, I am deeply grateful that attention is being given to the importance of music behind bars, because the presence of music in correctional institutions supports an environment of humanness and creates the potential for rehabilitation. Does music belong behind bars? Yes! Emphatically yes!

…But that’s not where the story should end.

 Let me tell you a story about a world behind bars through the eyes of a former prison music therapist. In a matter of years, I witnessed both the tremendously positive effects of music therapy in corrections and the systematic gutting of these important programs, despite their efficacy and innovation. I believe that public support of these programs could open the door to more healing and rehabilitation for the incarcerated population and our society. A song lyric comes to mind: “Let me take you down, ‘cause we’re going to Strawberry Fields…Nothing is real.”

The California Medical Facility and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

I worked as a prison music therapist inside the California Medical Facility (CMF) in Vacaville, CA from 2013-2017. CMF is a “male-only state prison medical facility” (intentionally using quotes here, because during my time I worked with multiple inmates/patients who identified as female and yet were forced to survive in a “male-only” prison. I was advised to refer to all inmates as “Mr. ___,” regardless of their preferred pronouns—I did not follow that guidance.)

 Per the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), “[CMF] was established in 1955 by the California Legislature to provide a centrally located facility to meet the medical, psychiatric, and dental health care needs of male felons incarcerated within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.” CMF is where they send mentally and/or physically ill inmates, referred to as “inmates/patients” or I/Ps. Infamous CMF inmates include Ed Kemper (current) and Charles Manson (former.)

 The prison was dark, musty, and mostly concrete with a side of asbestos. There was little temperature control, so on hot days (which were many) it easily reached 85 degrees inside my office, a converted prison cell with 2 tiny desks, my prison-issued guitar, and a barred window that looked out onto our unit’s recreation yard. On cold days, it typically averaged around 50 degrees in my office. My “cellie” (the name we used for our office partners) and I wore heavy coats, scarves, and gloves just to sit and type our treatment documentation notes. It was hard to complain about these conditions, because just on the other side of my office’s wall were the inmate’s prison cells, so they were subjected to the same temperature extremes as me. The only difference is that I got to go home at the end of each day.

I could always feel the energy shift when walking from the parking lot into the prison. Inside, it felt heavy. Once I got through the security check and two wrought iron gates, a heavy door opened to the “mainline.” The mainline was a path through the center of the prison created for “free staff”—not my word—to walk among the general population of inmates. Staff walked inside of two yellow lines down the mainline, while inmates were required to walk along the walls on the outside of the lines when staff were present. If there was an alarm, inmates were required to turn and face the wall with both hands elevated above them.

My official title was “Rehabilitation Therapist – Music (Safety),” and I worked in inpatient mental health treatment on an acute psychiatric unit operated by the Department of State Hospitals (DSH) inside the prison. The people who were incarcerated there at the time referred to me as everything from “Ms. Ellis,” to “The Music Lady.” I didn’t mind, so long as we kept things respectful. My role was to provide music therapy as mental health treatment to help “develop, maintain, or restore physical, emotional, and social competencies.” In many ways, the rehabilitation therapy team—which included music, art, and recreation therapists—were the “R” in CDCR: it was our responsibility to find creative ways to support rehabilitation efforts inside the prison, and we did it well.

Music versus Music Therapy

It’s important to note that music therapy is not the same as just listening to music for fun.

Listening to your favorite music is a tried-and-true way to feel better, and I highly recommend it. But, that isn’t technically “music therapy.”

Music Therapy is a well-established form of clinical treatment that uses music within the therapeutic relationship to help people accomplish goals related to their physical and/or mental health.

Music Therapy is provided by a Board-Certified Music Therapist who has earned the MT-BC credential. Board-Certified Music Therapists have completed a college and/or graduate degree in Music Therapy, completed an accredited Music Therapy internship and clinical practicum hours, passed a National Board Certification Exam, and obtained a license in applicable states.

While there are many wonderful uses of music both inside of prisons and out in the community, music therapy is a very specific use of music-based interventions within therapy.

Music Therapy in Prison

Every day in the prison was a wild ride. Even on the “quiet” days, you could expect the unexpected.

To set ourselves apart from the inmates, staff were not allowed to wear blue or orange. We also couldn’t wear anything that could be confused with a gang symbol. My typical daily attire was beige slacks, running shoes, a single-colored top that was neither too tight (to “avoid objectification”) nor too loose (to avoid “having fabric that would make it easy for a violent inmate to grab and choke [me]”), per the advice of the prison’s correctional officers. Sometimes when I was feeling sassy, I would wear one of my favorite band shirts.

I wore a gold whistle on my shirt collar (to use as an alarm in case of emergencies), an ID badge in my pocket that allowed me to enter (and leave!) the prison, and a black, magnetic name tag that said “Ms. Ellis, Music Therapist.” Luckily, I never experienced any breach of personal safety inside the prison. In fact, I believe there were many times I was kept safe by the vulnerable nature of my therapeutic tool behind bars: music. More on that soon.

My “patients” were incarcerated people serving prison sentences—ranging from minor drug crimes to murder, with everything in between—who suffered from serious mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and similar diagnoses. Many of the patients were sent to “the mental health side” of the prison to receive acute psychiatric care for stabilization following suicide attempts in the general population. They would typically arrive to our unit in beige prison-issued “safety smocks,” often appearing confused, delirious, and sometimes still actively suicidal—their eyes darting around the dayroom searching for any tools they could pick up and fashion into weapons either for protection, self-harm, or both.

The treatment team included a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, nurses, and rehabilitation therapists (music, art, or recreation therapists). It was our shared responsibility to assess each inmate/patient and provide them with mental health treatment so that they could return to a “lower level of care” in the prison as fast as possible. In many ways, it oddly felt like our work was stabilizing people to send them back to someplace worse. Nonetheless, the work was important, and someone had to do it.

The Impact of Music Therapy on Prison Inmates

During my four years as a prison music therapist, I saw the profound impact of music on the lives of my incarcerated patients. During initial assessments, when inmates/patients first arrived at the psychiatric unit, each team member was responsible for asking questions to help create a mental health treatment plan. Invariably, when I asked the question, “Do you like music?” followed by “Who are some of your favorite artists/bands?” people would light up, sometimes making eye contact for the first time since arriving to the unit. “I love music,” was often the response, often with the hint of a smile. When I introduced myself as the unit’s music therapist, the response was typically, “Music therapist!? That’s a thing!? When do I get to go to music therapy group?”

Once a patient was stabilized, typically through psychiatric medication, they were eligible to begin attending therapeutic groups, including music therapy. When I got the green light—which usually came from our unit’s psychiatrist—I would add the patient’s name to a list of people who would be invited to the day’s music therapy groups. In the prison, correctional officers (COs) had the final say about which inmates could leave their prison cells and visit the dayroom for groups, so if someone was deemed not safe to come out of their cell due to psychiatric instability, inappropriate behaviors, or violence, the COs would cross their names off the group list. During my first few months as a prison music therapist, I spent a lot of time on the receiving end of post-it notes returned to me from CO’s with every single name crossed off the list. “Sorry,” they’d say, “No one’s safe to come out today. Group’s canceled.” Nonetheless, I advocated relentlessly to allow the inmates to come to music therapy group, even if it meant limiting the group’s sizes or shortening group times.

During lengthy lockdowns—when inmates were not allowed to leave their cells due to security issues in other areas of the prison—I would take my old prison-issued guitar down the tier and ask for song requests, playing and singing any song that was thrown out. On those occasions, most of the inmates on the unit would stand near their steel doors and peer through the tiny glass windows, sometimes moving to the song’s rhythm and often singing along. If it was safe for them to have it, I would print out requested song lyrics, which many inmates posted on their bleak walls to inspire hope.

Being a prison music therapist was tough at first. Many CO’s saw music as frivolous, or worse, as something that the inmates did not deserve. “Why should they be having fun? They’re criminals. Let them sit in there and rot.” However, over time something amazing happened.  The more that correctional officers allowed music therapy groups to happen, the more they recognized that music therapy groups were so rewarding to the inmates/patients the prison unit tended to be calmer and more stable on days when music therapy groups were happening! This greatly incentivized CO’s to do whatever they could to make sure music therapy groups occurred as scheduled. More music, less problems. Less problems, less safety risks. Less safety risks, improved mental health treatment.

Over the years, I saw the incredible impact music had on inmates who were engaged in music therapy. Music therapy helped decrease stress, anxiety, and depression. It improved sleep, increased treatment compliance, and facilitated healthy emotional expression. It reduced the occurrence of violent behaviors on units and improved communication. It improved the inmates’ moods, helped to regulate emotions and behaviors, and increased their sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. It helped build the most unlikely relationships among people who likely would never have been in the same room outside of the prison— people who represented different ethnicities, backgrounds, ages, religions, gangs, crimes, sentences, mental illnesses, sorrows, & joys. Music built bridges and shattered the darkness.

In my four years of leading thousands of music therapy groups in the prison, there was only one time when I felt unsafe in a group. It was a typical day and a typical group, but we had a new group member who had a history of violence. He’d been on our unit for a long time and was compliant with his medications, so I invited him to music therapy group with both the treatment team’s and the correctional officers’ approval. Almost immediately after sitting down with my guitar in front of the twelve grown adults in prison-issued “blues,” the newest inmate stood up and lunged toward another inmate. Before I could react, the most interesting thing happened: two other inmates—who had both been in music therapy for several months—stood up in front of me like guards, shielding me from any potential violence and allowing me to press my alarm to alert the correctional officers. It’s a day I won’t soon forget.

The music had created a sense of shared vulnerability among all of us, and there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that music therapy was a safe space where we all respected each other, even if we didn’t agree.

Unfortunately, powers began to shift, and in 2017 everything changed.

The “Lift and Shift” of 2017: The Beginning of the End

In 2017, it was announced that Governor Jerry Brown’s budget directed the release and transfer of three DSH mental health facilities to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/California Correctional Health Care Services. This included the California Medical Facility, where I had worked for four years. This wouldn’t cause a direct or immediate loss of jobs, but it was abundantly clear that “lifting and shifting” the responsibility of mental health treatment in the prison from the Department of State Hospitals to the California Department of Corrections would be a systematic de-prioritization of vital treatment programs and roles, including music therapy. In fact, CDCR institutions that do not have a DSH presence (such as San Quentin and many others) do not hire music or art therapists at all, instead opting only to hire recreation therapists, depriving inmates of these vital services in most of California’s state prisons, despite years of advocacy from both music and art therapists.

When news broke about the “lift and shift”, clinicians (and many others who worked with mental health patients in the prison) were concerned that CDCR had very limited experience operating inpatient psychiatric programs. In fact, at the time, one of the two psychiatric programs CDCR operated, the California Institute for Women (CIW), was under audit by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee due to the suicide rate at CIW being eight times higher than the national average for incarcerated women and five times the rate for the entire California prison system.

Dozens of us drove to the State Capitol, each of us ready with short speeches to read before the California Assembly and Senate, begging them on behalf of our patients not to go through with the lift and shift. When we arrived, we were told that we would not be allowed to read our statements; instead, we were allowed simply to stand in front of a microphone to state our names and positions.

In the months that followed, the culture of the prison changed dramatically. It seemed to me the “R” might as well have been removed from CDCR, as mental health treatment (especially so-called “ancillary” modalities like music therapy) took the back burner to “safety” and punishment. The same correctional officers who had finally recognized the importance and efficacy of music therapy in the prison were once again back to handing me post-it notes with every single name crossed off my music therapy group lists. “Sorry, no one can come out today. Group’s canceled.”

I advocated relentlessly for as long as I could, and many of the inmates/patients wrote lengthy letters and signed petitions advocating for their rights, but it wasn’t enough. The release of psychiatric facilities from DSH to CDCR took place on July 1st, 2017, and gave CDCR complete control and responsibility for the psychiatric programs. The result was that the culture and environment became so unsupportive and unwelcoming to treatment providers that one by one people from all disciplines began to leave. On my own unit, what once was filled with music was now filled with the sounds of angry and frustrated inmates banging and kicking their doors, yelling at guards to let them go to groups. I put away my prison-issued guitar for the last time in October 2017, in search of something new. My heart felt heavier than the day I’d entered the prison. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I couldn’t stay.

The Future of Music Therapy in Prisons

Some of you might be thinking, “Wow, that was a dismal way to end a happy story about Taylor Swift’s music in prisons.” And you’re right. Unfortunately, I don’t think anything changes until we peek behind the curtain, and when there are enough eyes looking at a topic—like music in prisons—that’s the right time to speak the truth.

When I began reading the articles about the positive impact of music in prisons, I first felt joy, and then I felt frustration. It’s true: music inspires hope in prisons. It is also true that equitable access to programs like music therapy do more than just inspire hope—they directly address a horrifying mental health crisis that is being concealed behind prison doors.

Call to Action to Increase the Presence of Music Therapy in U.S. Prisons

First, understand that music for personal use is important, but it is not the same as music therapy. In addition to equitable access to music for personal listening, board-certified music therapists should be working in every prison in the United States.

Second, if you are in a position to advocate for equitable access to mental health treatment in prisons, including music and art therapy, do it. Use your voice. Use my voice. Let’s connect and collaborate.

Third, for every story about Taylor Swift’s music inspiring people in prison, please include information about music therapy and how many of these programs have been gutted/shut down, despite research supporting their efficacy and organized efforts from mental health professionals advocating for equitable access to music and music therapy in prisons.

Public awareness and advocacy in support of music therapy in prisons would help increase equitable access both to music and music therapy for incarcerated folx. Share this article, and please reach out to me if you are a fellow change-maker.

Taylor Swift was brave enough in her song “Anti-Hero” to admit, “Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” How extraordinarily brave it would be if collectively we looked at our prison system and said, “Hi, this is a problem, and here’s one solution that could help make things better.” Sometimes all that’s needed are brave voices coming together to unleash the power of light in dark places.

If you need mental health support and are interested in individual music therapy for yourself or someone you love, please click here to learn more about my private music therapy practice.