CBC Radio feature on prison music program leads to family reunion

This show originally aired on January 22, 2017. 

Lloyd Ingraham and his family hadn't been in touch for the 12 years he was inside the Pittsburgh Institution (since renamed Joyceville), outside Kingston, Ontario. So it came as a surprise when his son, who didn't even know if his father was alive, got in touch.

"I think that's my father," read the email Ingraham's son sent to Hugh Christopher Brown, creator of the Pros and Cons prison music program.

Brown and Ingraham were featured in an episode of Tapestry about the music program earlier this year. Ingraham had been part of Pros and Cons from its inception and remained in contact with Brown after he was released on parole.

After chancing upon this Tapestry episode online, Ingraham's son decided to reach out to his estranged father.

"I have since visited my sons and their families, and the process of healing has begun," Lloyd Ingraham wrote to the show after the surprise reunion.

It was a healing journey that began with Brown's music program.

How it all began

In 2010, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a highly controversial move, closed down the prison farm program at six institutions in New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The agricultural program began in 1880s. Inmates participated in farm maintenance activities such as feeding cattle, cleaning barns, operating milking machinery, harvesting corn and grains and planting crops, cultivating food for themselves.

The prison farms helped reduce recidivism and increase employment opportunities for prisoners once they were released. When the prison farms were closed, Brown, a musician, was motivated to create a replacement.

Brown was a member of the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir and has played with the Tragically Hip and the Barenaked Ladies.

"I have a history of applying music to social justice efforts. It became apparent to me that a benefit [concert] in this case would not do because who wants to support sex offenders and murderers, right? So I figured I just needed to get in and do what I knew how to do, add some positivity to the environment."

Pros and Cons prison music program

The Joyceville Institution prison chapel was converted into a jam space and recording studio. Inmates worked on songs with Brown and visiting professional musicians such as Sarah Harmer and Kate Fenner.

The result is an album called Postcards from the County.

All of the music is written and recorded anonymously. No one gets any personal reward; a sense of ownership is replaced with a sense of giving.

The record is available for free to the public, with the hope that the music inspires listeners to support certain charities chosen by the inmates. Brown says the project has already raised thousands of dollars for these causes.

How music helps to rehabilitate prisoners

The positive impact of Pros and Cons goes beyond the money raised for charity. It also has a healing effect on the prisoners.

"When you have caused great harm to another, it's far easier to remove yourself from the present tense. If you take the risk of taking responsibility for your action, that pain is so immense that you need assistance, you need love, and you need an emotional platform to accommodate that. And music is an emotional platform."

But connecting with emotions isn't easy in prison, where inmates need to be guarded in order to survive.

"The payoff of being a tough guy in prison is obvious. But when you take that aspect away, then what's there? That's terrifying for any of us, let alone being in a place of utter oppression and when you feel like you deserved it. When those guys are really owning themselves... and when they start really owning their crimes and really working... what I witness is humility."

Ingraham says the prison music program helped him to redefine himself and imagine a new life on the outside.

"We tend to be defined as the worst thing we ever do, but we're so much more than that. These people who came in and worked with us, they realized that and they saw us as much more than our worst crime."

Brown says he doesn't ask about the crimes of the men he is working with.

"Part of my policy with the guys is that I don't want to know what they've done, because that's been looked after. They've been tried and sentenced. And now I'm just the guy with a mic trying to figure out what's possible."

The Pros and Cons program received a $25,000 grant from the David Rockefeller Fund in 2016 to expand the program within Canada, with an eye to exporting it to the United States as well.

In the past year, the program has expanded to other prisons. Three new records are in the works - two from the men at Joyceville Institution and one from Grand Valley Women's Institute set to be released on International Women's Day in March 2018. All the prison works will be housed on Brown's label Wolfe Island Records.

A family reunion he never imagined

After Lloyd Ingraham reconnected with his sons, he learned there was even more family awaiting him.

"I was also blessed to find out that I have 11 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. Your show made this reunion possible. Bless you. My personal journey continues. I grow stronger every day in my faith and in my resolve to succeed in my return to society and in my desire to help those such as myself, find a way out of the darkness," Ingraham wrote to the show.

Click LISTEN to hear the entire episode about Pros and Cons.