The Beat Within: writing from the juvenile halls

The impact and psychological effect of being incarcerated has long driven the world’s literature, not least because prisoners have an enormous amount of free time (something that writers often complain about not having, though rarely do they go to the extreme of being locked up in order to obtain it). Writers like the Apostle Paul, Gandhi, and (more locally) Martin Luther King, Jr., Thoreau, O. Henry and (even more locally) Jack London took their experiences in jail and either produced works that detailed incarcerated life or used the time to write popular and important messages.

The Beat Within is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that capitalizes on this given spare time. It started in 1995 as a conversation program in San Francisco’s juvenile hall, a way of letting incarcerated youth voice their opinions, gripes, thoughts. The Beat’s founder and director, Dave Inocencio, would take some of the poems and stories that were produced in these classes and send them to newspapers in an attempt to bring more attention to these young writers, but it was a marginal success at best.

“It was in 1996,” he told me, “when Tupac, died that I felt that their generation had lost a major voice, and that these kids in juvenile halls really needed a place of their own to make themselves heard.” So instead of mailing the poems off to a third party, David started the Beat Within’s own magazine as a showcase for pieces written entirely by youth in jail. From San Francisco, the Beat Within program spread to other juvenile halls in the Bay Area, setting up programs in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Santa Cruz, Marin, Fresno, Solano, and Monterey counties. Not long after dominating the Bay Area, the Beat branched out to other states, setting up three programs in New Mexico, one in Arizona, and one in Washington, D.C.

Once a week, volunteer workshop facilitators show up at the detention facility and run two, one-hour long classes in the units. The facilitators bring with them a topic sheet with three or four ideas to help the kids get started writing. The topics range from “What is your favorite meal?” (a popular topic, since prison food is chief complaint) to “Have you ever experienced violence (physical or emotional) in a relationship? Have you ever inflicted violence on someone while you were in a relationship with them? Do you think that violence is an accepted aspect of being in a relationship?”

“At the Beat Within, we go through a lot of trouble to censor inappropriate sexual remarks, foul language, and gang references. There is enough tension in our communities already  - we don’t aim to bolster it. It is in the Beat’s interest to promote peace and unity. Our goal is to educate each other.” This declaration of peace, unity, and education is wide-felt, an education not only to the writers (writers who are sometimes illiterate when they enter the correctional system) but also to the judges, probation officers, cops, and social workers who read what the incarcerated youth in our country have to say.

Although the magazine runs to a sizeable 50+ pages each week, there simply isn’t enough room for every piece submitted, something that the writers lament whenever they get a chance. The best way to console them is to point out the fact that they have a chance to be read in a publication that reaches thousands of people a week, far more than many other writers ever get the opportunity to achieve. And their participation doesn’t end when they leave the juvenile correction system - at the back of every Beat Within is a section called “the Beat Without,” writings from adult prisoners in the general prison population all across America. Writers who have been released from jail are also encouraged to volunteer at the Beat’s San Francisco offices, helping with the printing and preparation process of the magazine. The Beat not only publishes their writings, but also prints their artwork, and every cover piece is produced by an inmate. A hardback volume of this art has been collected and published, as well.

The Beat Within also has a site with audio recordings of some pieces from the magazine. Another site maintains a message board for members of the community to comment on the writings that come out of the prison system.