Sing Sing and the Case for Rehabilitative Justice

The Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York houses roughly 1500 men. It also houses the Rehabilitation Through the Arts Program, a program that provides Sing Sing’s prisoners with the opportunity to work on theatre, music, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression as a form of rehabilitation.

The film Sing Sing, which debuted at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, follows the RTA program in a fictionalized version of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility from the point of view of the prisoners working on a play. Throughout the film, we get to see the prisoners work on theatre as they process their futures as inmates, the death happening around them, and what they’re missing in the outside world.

As the film continued, and as this beautiful story of human connection continued to play out, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the premise of Sing Sing seemed a little fairytale-esque. As touching as the film is, was I really to believe that maximum-security prisoners were successfully rehabilitated through the arts. This was, of course, until I saw the end credits of the film.

Clarence Maclin – played by himself

Sean Dino Johnson – played by himself

And it went on. So, not only were the characters in the film mostly entirely real people, but these real people have now continued to act upon being released from prison. Upon seeing this revelation during the credits, I almost bawled my eyes out at the beautiful real journey that all these men have faced. So why, then, was it so hard to believe that rehabilitative justice through art had worked?

The answer, of course, is that rehabilitative justice is not commonly enough practiced. Too often, men and women are sent to prison as punishment; from a perspective lacking any understanding of the situations that cause people to commit crimes. What the RTA program at Sing Sing proves is that when given something to live for – when looked at as people rather than as prisoners – inmates have the opportunity to reform and reintegrate into society.

And with the fact that the film Sing Sing is largely a true story in mind, it instantly becomes one of my favourite films of the year; one of those movies that inspires my political journey and changes my worldview. This is a movie about grief, a movie about reconciling with time lost as a prisoner, but it is also a film about the power of art and the power of passion. To these men who didn’t have a lot to live for as inmates with lengthy sentences, theatre gave them something to live for. And as we see Divine G (Colman Domingo) continue to perform plays as other inmates have been released to the outside world, we understand that art has kept him hanging on through all the time loss and life loss that he has endured.
It’s easy, as outsiders, to view prisoners as a monolith of bad people. I’ve been guilty of this in the past, and one may even say that I was guilty of it when I assumed that these tales of rehabilitation exist only in fiction. But what a film like Sing Sing does, is remind us that we are all human; that despite a person committing one bad crime and going to prison, they are still deserving of the opportunity to redeem themselves. And with the help of art as a driver towards passion and betterment, the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program in real life provided the movie Sing Sing with actors fit to play themselves in a beautiful story.

Pairing all of that heavy stuff with the film’s wonderful vintage-feeling cinematography, as well as Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin’s brilliant performances, we got a film that is in contention for my favourite of the year – and one that was absolutely robbed of a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.

Remember, we are all people. Thank you for reading, and I’ll talk to you again next month.