Advertisement
Christmas Special - Get your first 12 issues for just £12
SUBSCRIBE
News

The music label helping prisoners dream beyond their cell walls

When cells slammed shut in lockdown, rehabilitation hopes stuttered. Prisoner label InHouse Records stayed in the groove though – using music to boost skills for a brighter future

InHouse Records. Aux. Volume 9, Issue 3. January 2020. Image credit: InHouse Records

InHouse Records. Aux. Volume 9, Issue 3. January 2020. Image credit: InHouse Records

It looks like a record label, acts like a record label and even sounds like a record label, and yet InHouse Records is in essence anything but, according to project founder Judah Armani.

“Fundamentally it’s a Trojan Horse,” the Big Issue Changemaker asserts, of the award-winning social initiative operating in and out of English prisons.

The scheme has massively boosted positive behaviour among participants, practically none of whom go on to reoffend. “It is a record label for sure,” Armani elaborates. “It’s aspirational. But actually, it’s not about the music industry. It’s not even about music therapy. It’s about choice. And choice reminds us we’re humans.”

Lockdowns have taken income away from hundreds of Big Issue sellers. Support The Big Issue and our vendors by signing up for a subscription.

InHouse Records runs workshops – or at least it did until Covid-19 restrictions hit – that support offenders in all of the work that a conventional record label facilitates and engages in, from songwriting, rapping, musicianship and production to artist management and other associated technical and creative endeavours. All in the pursuit of the same end product: recorded music, mixed and mastered to a professional standard covering a vast array of styles from rap to reggae, rock and folk, which InHouse then platforms through publishing and distribution partnerships with major music industry players such as Sony and Universal.

It’s an initiative which can’t help but let some of those involved dare to dream beyond prison walls, perhaps all the way to success and fame. Yet InHouse is grounded in something much more elementary than that, and almost all of the people who engage with it – around 70 people inside prison at any one time, plus about another 40 “graduates” outside – seem to understand it. 

Advertisement
Advertisement

The process of making music creates the skills that you need not just to be a better musician, but a better employee, a better husband, a better father

“It’s not about becoming famous, for a lot of them,” says Armani, who has worked in the music industry with Fender guitars and artists such as Jamie Cullum, yet whose background and passion is in product design as a driver for social change. “It’s about actually being taken seriously and being given the space to engage with and do something meaningful,” he continues. “The beautiful thing is that the process of making music creates the skills that you need in order to not just be a better musician, but a better employee, a better husband, a better father.”

Across the four south-east of England prisons in which InHouse operated pre-pandemic, staff observed a 428 per cent increase in good behaviour incidents among participants. Among graduates, a reoffending rate of less than one per cent has been recorded.

Armani has since found himself inundated with opportunities to enhance and expand the project. Or at least he did, until Covid-19 struck. Not only were InHouse’s workshops suspended, but prisoners suddenly found themselves confined to their cells almost day-round – choice all but extinguished.

As Armani sees it, he had made a “promise” to InHouse’s members, “and I wasn’t going to let something as tiny as a microbe get in the way of that promise. So, we needed to find a way of connecting with these guys, immediately.” A new product was born: AUX, a weekly music magazine, covering creativity, songwriting, rhythm, production and culture, extensively featuring contributions from InHouse participants.

InHouse Records. Aux. Volume 9, Issue 3. January 2020. Image credit: InHouse Records
InHouse Records Aux cover January 2020
InHouse Records. Aux. Volume 9, Issue 3. January 2020. Image credit: InHouse Records

Another of Armani’s Trojan Horses – “education by disguise,” as he puts it – AUX is proving even more pervasive than the record label, with demand soaring not just among prisoners actively interested in music, but even among the general prison population, eager for regular reading material to relieve the boredom of being locked up in lockdown. More than 50,000 copies of the magazine have been distributed so far, to prisons both in south-east England and on the east coast of the USA. 

“We went from meaningfully connecting with maybe 100 people a week to now a few thousand people across multiple prisons,” says Armani. “That’s been an incredible shift that wouldn’t have happened had the pandemic not forced our hand.” Once Covid-19 restrictions begin to lift, Armani hopes that InHouse will receive the access, support and funding it needs to get more prisoners than ever involved with workshops, further spreading the proven benefits it can bring. 

Inhouse Records founder Judah Armani
Inhouse Records founder Judah Armani

Towards this article, Armani asked some of his participants to write something in response to the simple brief ‘My Big Issue’. Unsurprisingly, many of them chose to express themselves how they know best – through rhymes. If we showed some compassion, a little of give/we could combat the big issue outside and within, concludes a set of verses by one InHouse graduate, rapper Cas Ghostman. At the end of the tunnel, there’s always light/through the pain and struggle you’ll be alright, goes the refrain to Growing Up in Jail by Kingshay Bature, AKA Tyno. 

The accountability, hope, aspiration and eagerness to communicate implicit in the lyrics presents more compelling proof of InHouse’s successes and importance, reckons Armani, than any statistic ever could.

“When you can make a bit more sense of your past and understand a bit more about the choices that you made and the context that you made them in,” he reflects. “It gives you the rocket fuel to make a better future for yourself.”

This article is from a special edition of The Big Issue magazine. Get a copy of ‘Locked Up in Lockdown‘ in The Big Issue Shop or purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play.

Advertisement

Change a vendor's life this Christmas

This Christmas, 3.8 million people across the UK will be facing extreme poverty. Thousands of those struggling will turn to selling the Big Issue as a vital source of income - they need your support to earn and lift themselves out of poverty.

Recommended for you

View all
DWP benefit reforms to get people into work are 'smokescreen for cuts', disability activist says
dwp secretary liz kendall
Disability benefits

DWP benefit reforms to get people into work are 'smokescreen for cuts', disability activist says

Ending post-Grenfell cladding crisis could take until 2035 and beyond: 'Unacceptably slow'
Grenfell tower
Cladding crisis

Ending post-Grenfell cladding crisis could take until 2035 and beyond: 'Unacceptably slow'

We've given 50,000 haircuts to homeless people – here's how a simple trim can change everything
Photo of man hugging a woman to illustrate a story about the Haircuts 4 Homeless charity
Homelessness

We've given 50,000 haircuts to homeless people – here's how a simple trim can change everything

Cash-strapped council warns it's at breaking point as neighbour places homeless people in its town
homeless peoples' tents in street
Homelessness

Cash-strapped council warns it's at breaking point as neighbour places homeless people in its town

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know
4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know