Whorl Inside a Loop portrays one of the most creative and effective approaches developed by social workers. The characters in Whorl Inside a Loop, utilize creative arts therapy as an avenue to self-love, accountability, achievement, and freedom. This is “corrections” at its best.

THE PLAY 

A dizzy actress gets the bright idea to volunteer to teach a 12-week course on “Theatricalizing the Personal Narrative” to six convicted murderers in a maximum security men’s prison. This is the plot of Whorl Inside a Loop, a new off-Broadway play written by Dick Scanlon and Sherie Rene Scott.

Ms. Scott, playing herself, volunteers at a men’s prison to lead a theater workshop. The men in the prison work with her to develop personal monologues based on their lives, which help them come to terms with their crimes, but also reveal their talents for writing and story-telling. 

REAL LIFE 

However much editing was done to the original source material, the personal stories that emerge from workshop sessions in the prison classroom are devastating. The monologues reveal the inmates to be more than just men who committed terrible acts. They reveal their cherished roles as sons, brothers, and friends, and their own suffering from neglect and childhood trauma. They speak bluntly of traumatic childhoods and broken homes, of losing family to drugs, illness, and the criminal life, and of how they survived in this marginalized world of unrelenting poverty and violence. 

THE CONFLICT 

Our social worker colleagues working in criminal justice struggle to resolve the sometimes conflicted dichotomy between the need for public safety and the need to address the bio-psychosocial needs of offenders. Two opposing schools of thought drive the discussion related to crime prevention. One, the pro-punishment school, postulates that punishment is the means to preventing crime. The positivist school, on the other hand, suggests that some instances of criminal behavior are determined by factors, such as mental illness, that offenders find difficult to control. 

During the late 1980s, judges in both state and federal judicial systems were required to follow sentencing guidelines. These guidelines significantly limited judges’ discretion to consider psychosocial factors during the sentencing phase of a trial. These sentencing changes forced the social work profession to examine new realities and develop a more multidimensional approach. 

THE RESOLUTION 

Whorl Inside a Loop portrays one of the most creative and effective approaches developed by social workers. The characters in Whorl Inside a Loop, utilize creative arts therapy as an avenue to self-love, accountability, achievement, and freedom. This is “corrections” at its best.