Painting and Rehabilitation

Dear Dr. Thornell,

Thank you for all the changes you have made toward improving the quality of life for incarcerated men and women in Arizona.

Art of Our Soul is an amazing addition to Lumley Unit at Perryville. The women here never dreamed of a program like this. It has made a difference by lowering our stress and anxiety. It has benefitted our mental health and emotional well-being.

The environment of Art of Our Soul is the delectable buttercream frosting on the proverbial cake. The cake itself is art as therapy. That said, many women here found solace in painting before acrylic paint was taken away from us in January 2021.

Department reasoning at that time had to do with two men who escaped from another Arizona facility. When they were recaptured, it was discovered that these men had used tan/beige industrial-grade building paint to coat their orange clothing---the same paint that many department buildings across the state had recently been coated with using inmate labor.

Although the men did not use the small bottles of primary colors then sold to us on the commissary, department staff determined the entire statewide population should be punished for these men's actions. Acrylic paint, a healthy means of coping for thousands of men and women, was taken from us all.

I don't know what you've been told by your staff, but public information requests by the media revealed that the men did not escape because of the color of their clothes. They escaped because of huge lapses in security. They cut through ten (10!) chain-link fences. Broken sensors on these fences did not detect their tampering. They managed to acquire a tool that enabled them to cut through the metal. Complacent staff did not immediately report the men's absence at the next head count, giving the men a substantial lead time to get away from the complex.

Because their actions had nothing to do with acrylic art paint, please consider allowing it to be sold again on the commissary. Those men did not use it. It was available for decades and continues to be available in other states' prisons. Arizona went backward in a knee-jerk response to an embarrassing security lapse that had nothing to do with school-grade paint.

Now that this same kind of paint is being used again in a limited setting for Art of Our Soul, the population beseeches you to reinstate this harmless and much-loved commissary item to help us cope with our environment and the long sentences many of us face.

Thank you for considering!