ARTS CAN CHANGE LIVES

CONGRATULATIONS to Community Corrections and Kickstart Art, combining for the Freedom Project, offering a place for those on community-based orders to develop pro-social behaviours.

The program offers strategies to affect the change that warehousing offenders in the negative atmosphere of a prison cannot (“Arts help offenders craft a better future”, August 31). As Justice Minister Elise Archer said, the program can be an enormous benefit in someone’s life and self-esteem.”

The $400,000 budgeted for the three-year pilot project, which is already changing participants behaviour, is a bargain compared to the cost of building new jail.

If more innovative, effective programs such as Kickstart Art are developed as alternatives to incarceration, do we need to build an expensive new prison?

Elizabeth Osborne

North Hobart