Exploiting similarities between crime and drama

Insight Arts Trust has a presence within the probation service, offering arts activities to its clients.

Some offenders seem at times almost to live in a separate reality, one which protects them from the moral implcations of their crime. Within this reality, it's possible to stand tall, to exert power. It's a fictional reality because it excludes certain aspects of the reality which most of us share, such as the victim's suffering and the moral implications of the crime.

Insight Arts Trust attempts to channel the offender's imagination, inventiveness and passion into creativity. In other words, writing, painting, drama, building fictions within reality rather than imposing them on it. Such activities can often play a key, sometimes essential role, in reforming offenders - waking them to their own sensitivity, their awareness of others, and to their capacity to solve problems without resorting to egocentric, 'false' fictions.

Jean Genet argued that 'the only thing more exciting than committing a crime is getting caught.' What he hinted at was that the motive is often not 'to get away with it' but to experience an intensity of passion, emotion, excitement. A sense of the world moving because of what you have done. These feelings are increased rather than diminished in capture.

'The world - the criminal's audience - is amazed and appalled by what you have done. It's almost theatre'

With any luck, the world - the criminal's audience - is amazed and appalled by what you have done. It's almost theatre. Indeed the act of performance is intense, emotional, physical. It, too, involves breaking rules and cries out for an audience. It, too, happens in a world of crafted fiction where the human for a moment is a god, sealed off by the fiction from the consequences of the act.

Insight Arts Trust, 16 Nevill Road, London N16 8SR (tel 071 275 8482).