colored pencil and ink; 11×14”
“My piece is about Article 5 of the Human Rights, Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment of human. It applies to private prisons, and how the corporations that control them don’t actually care about the people they’re supposed to be rehabilitating. It’s about how they don’t see their prisoners as human beings, only as numbers, a resource to be exploited, money to be made. It depicts on the right, three prisoners, and on the left, three 100-dollar bills. I chose the private prison industry. Prisons are meant to rehabilitate, not just punish the criminal, to get them the help they need to re-enter society. Recidivism rates in other countries are very low, and their prisons are different. In Norway, prisons aren’t barred cells with no windows, where one never gets to see the sun, but more like a small apartment, with a window without bars, a bed, a TV, and real food. Rehabilitating prisoners instead of punishing them, and treating them like people lowers the recidivism rate.”
ARTIST BIO: Kaitlyn Johnson is a Grade 11 student at Butler Tech School of Art (SOA).
PROJECT: After learning about human rights in Mrs. Valerie Folz’ Government classes at Butler Tech School of the Arts, 45 high school students chose a human rights issue they wanted to research. Then in Mrs. Mary Catherine Ruby’s Visual Art + Design classes they visually communicated their voice through their art using symbolic imagery to represent the human rights issue they had selected.