articulate their problems, write songs, express themselves, reflect upon why they’re there.”

Traditionally, most prison arts programs are funded through a combination of public and private money. Budget shortfalls across the country have largely wiped out the public part of this equation, however, so it has been left up to donors, volunteers, and the inmates themselves to scrape together the cash. Often these efforts fall short.

At a prison in Boyds, Maryland, that has also received guitars from Shade, music was being employed as therapy for inmates suffering from psychological problems. “It proved very effective in getting withdrawn individuals to socialize and express themselves,” says Patricia Sollock, the prison’s chief of mental health services. “Unfortunately, we lost a therapist due to budget cuts.”

The Prisons Foundation is funded mostly through the largesse of a single donor with a colorful past. In the ’80s, Lloyd S. Rubin ran an investment scam out of Panama. When it was uncovered in 1991, he faked his own death at a monastery in Thailand. Years later, he was extradited to the U.S., where he served two years in prison. “It’s a great source of rehabilitation for those who have been incarcerated,” he says of Sobin’s work. “There’s a possibility of income to prisoners or their families, and a chance to be recognized and not feel as if they’re wasting their time.”

Rachel Williams, a professor of art education at the University of Iowa who specializes in prison arts programs, points out that roughly 98 percent of prisoners are eventually released, so how they’re treated is a matter of public concern. “Would you rather those people get out bitter, angry, and even less human than when they got in?” she says. “Music and art allow them to experience a level of empathy they may not otherwise have access to.”

The public remains skeptical, though. Many people, especially victims’ rights advocates, don’t believe inmates should be kicking out the jams, or at the very least, don’t believe tax dollars should be subsidizing it. Nancy Ruhe, executive director of Parents of Murdered Children, questions the value of these programs as anything more than a diversion. “I don’t know how an art or music class, other than keeping prisoners busy, is going to help,” she says. “To think we’re going to rehabilitate them because they can draw a picture, I don’t think so. It just grabs public attention and gives sympathy to them.”

had lost its allure. “I met a professor who was in his 60s,” he says. “He’d written 35 books, every one of them fairly useless. I said, ‘I don’t want to end up like that.’ ”

Living through the 1960s and the civil rights movement, Sobin says, cemented for him the importance of personal freedom, so he moved to D.C. and started The Adult Business Report, one of his first publications geared toward adult businesses and “libertarian issues.” During the ’80s, he became a sex industry entrepreneur, opening swingers clubs, massage parlors, escort services, phone sex lines, and a small museum near Dupont Circle dedicated to the history of erotica and prostitution. At their height, his businesses reportedly raked in more than $1 million a year.

He also became a political gadfly, heading the First Amendment Consumer Trade Society to advocate for the rights of adult businesses, and running quixotic, ultimately unsuccessful campaigns for public office, including campaigns for D.C. mayor in 1982 and 1986. Running for the school board in 1983, he offered contributors free memberships to his swingers clubs. During the 1986 mayoral race, he was accused of operating a brothel at his campaign headquarters.

For his trouble, he was occasionally arrested and slapped with short jail sentences for violating city ordinances aimed at curbing the sex trade. He returned fire by filing civil lawsuits and publishing stories about his detractors.

In February 1991, Sobin was touring nude beaches in Florida, gathering footage for what he claimed would be a documentary about nudism.

DENNIS SOBIN GREW up in New York City and attended Hofstra University in the mid-’60s. After graduating, he entered a sociology doctoral program at NYU, and between 1968 and 1974, published three books on urban planning and the working poor. By the late ’70s, though, the academic life

At one beach club on the state’s west coast, local nudists were disturbed to see him filming his six-year-old stepdaughter and eight-year-old stepson, and notified police. According to the arrest report, witnesses saw, among other things, Sobin videotaping his stepdaughter nude “seated on a picnic table. She had her legs spread wide apart. At the same time, the defendant placed a banana between her legs next to her vagina. He then videotaped this scene holding the camcorder approximately four inches from her vaginal area.”

Sobin contends the witnesses were a considerable distance from him and misjudged what they saw. Nonetheless, he was saddled with more than 20 different charges. But the prosecution never located the most incriminating video footage described in the report. “They offered me a misdemeanor plea and a year probation,” Sobin says. “I said, ‘No. I’ve hurt no one. I’m standing up for the rights of people to be free.’”

Sobin has repeatedly pointed to his refusal to accept the state’s plea bargain as proof of both the charges’ flimsiness and his principled commitment to truth, but the prosecutor, Robert Attridge, recalls it differently. “There was never any formal offer where we’d have a misdemeanor or probation,” Attridge says. “I had an informal discussion with his attorney and said, ‘Is there any way we can resolve this? If not, we’ll prepare for trial.’ That was the extent of my involvement with any plea negotiations.”

Sobin’s public defender during this early phase of the case, William Eble, says the truth about the plea deal is convoluted. “The State

Attorney’s official position back then was that they don’t make plea offers, but will entertain offers from the accused. Dennis firmly believed in his innocence, refused to entertain the negotiations that were being informally discussed, and refused to allow an offer to be made. On the other hand, there’s no doubt, had Dennis authorized me to make the offer to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, it would’ve been accepted.”

Instead, he was sentenced to 12 years behind bars. A year after his sentencing, the federal government tacked on additional time for a fraud charge relating to a bankruptcy proceeding years before.

Portrait commissioned for SPIN by Jahi Foster-Bey, a former prisoner who is part of Sobin’s foundation

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