Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) in Katonah Received a Prestigious National Award

Rehabilitation Through The Arts (RTA), the Katonah-based organization that works in five New York prisons throughout the Hudson Valley region, including Sing Sing, is one of five non-profit organizations in the United States to receive the prestigious 2015 Paul H. Chapman Award from the Foundation for Improvement of Justice, Inc. On Saturday, September 26, Ms. Ricki Gold (r), RTA Deputy Director, accepted a $10,000 award from the Foundation during the Foundation’s annual awards banquet at the Four Seasons Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. During the event, Ms. Gold was photographed with William Hanauer (l), former mayor of the Village of Ossining and the RTA Board member who nominated RTA for the Award.

“We are truly honored,” stated RTA Founder and Executive Director Katherine Vockins, “to receive this nationally-recognized award. Being recognized by The Foundation for Improvement of Justice is very special to RTA because we work mostly inside prison and out of the public eye. We are grateful to be among the recipients selected each year by their Board of Directors to receive the generous award.”

The Foundation for Improvement of Justice is a highly-regarded organization with 31 years of success. It is a private, not-for-profit institution founded in 1984 to improve local, state, and federal systems of justice within the United States. Each year the Foundation accepts nominations for the Paul H. Chapman Award, named for the Foundation’s founder, to recognize and reward individuals or organizations whose innovative programs and work have made improvements in the nation’s various systems of justice. Between 1986 and 2014, the Foundation generously distributed $2,444,000 in 244 cash awards.

RTA is receiving the Chapman Award “for its success in reducing recidivism in prisons and changing the lives of a population with little hope for a meaningful future.”

Founded by Vockins in 1996 as a small theatre group in Ossining’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility, RTA, the leading program of the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Prison Communities International, Inc., today works in five New York State correctional facilities. Thirty plus facilitators, professional artists in their fields, take the rehabilitative power of the arts behind bars, teaching, directing and leading productions and workshops as varied as Shakespeare studies, poetry, modern dance, visual art, public speaking, comedy writing, music, voice and, especially, theater. Participants build personal, social and cognitive life skills critical to functioning in all aspects of life inside and outside prison. A theatre program for at-risk youth and a program to join former prisoners with professionals to create an original play about the challenges of re-entering society were recently launched by RTA.

RTA’s mission is “the belief in the profound rehabilitative effects that engaging in the arts has on men and women behind bars. Through creative expression in theater, dance, voice, writing and visual arts, prisoners learn social and cognitive skills that act as a springboard to education, family reconciliation and ultimately successful re-integration into community life.”

“The success of RTA,” explained Vockins, “is to use the arts to teach life skills that will help prisoners, inside the walls and when they transition successfully out of prison back into regular, day-to-day society after released.”

More than 95 percent of the 53,565 prisoners in 60 New York State prisons today will eventually return to their homes, neighborhoods and previous lifestyles. Vockins commented, “We work with individuals to help eliminate the dysfunctional behavior they learned on the streets, and to help them become productive, tax-paying, law-biding members of society after their release.”

For more information, and ways to donate to RTA, or to volunteer, visit www.rta-arts.org or call 914-232-7566.