America’s Carceral System Locks Up Lots of Creativity

According to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative, U.S. taxpayers and families of system-involved people pay at least $445 billion every year to keep people incarcerated. Which is to say, we in the U.S. spend an astronomical amount of money to lock people up.

Meanwhile, conditions for incarcerated people have been getting steadily worse. Take one program — The Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA. Created by Congress over two decades ago, the PREA supposedly created a zero tolerance policy for prison rape and federal standards to address the issue. Last year, the Trump administration canceled the estimated $16 millionDOJ spent on it. The PREA Resource Center temporarily shut down in 2025. Today it is operating in a limited capacity.

In Michigan, the state spent about $52,050 per prisoner last year, about a $4,000 increase from 2024. How is that money spent? Yusef Qualls or “Q”, a former juvenile lifer and incarcerated artist, says he “never understood where that number came from” because the prison where he was held provided so little. He wore the same uniform for 10 years.

Q served 28 years in prison and was released just five months before I spoke to him in 2023. His art depicts life inside prison and evokes the physical and emotional pain that system-involved people endure every day. “Beat Down By Time” shows four inmates being physically punished by a guard, and a man holding a whip with clocks on it. This is Q’s story for all to see: beaten down by the years of his sentence and forced into a system of labor exploitation.

“It was either work or be punished. You don’t have an option,” he says. “I was only paid 17 cents an hour. So for 28 years, this is what I experienced. It is recognized as slavery.”

Q participated in the Prison Creative Arts Project, or PCAP. An independent program of the University of Michigan, PCAP facilitates creative arts workshops and hosts exhibitions to showcase incarcerated artists’ work. There is a book out now about the project, and as gorgeous as it is, each piece of art is a stark reminder of all the talent and creativity we’ve locked away. Danny Valentine, another formerly incarcerated artist I spoke with, says he was planning on taking his life during his prison sentence. See Q and Valentine’s art on this week’s show, and hear PCAP curator Janie Paul share how art is a tool for decarceration.

Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on Laura Flanders & Friends, a nationally-syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is the author of several books, as well as a column on Substack.