Inside
Creative arts, writing and literacy programs that help people rediscover their identity and potential.
Arts · Education · Re-entry
Freedom Begins With Opportunity
Building real pathways to education, healing, dignity and a future beyond the system — inside California prisons, through re-entry and on the journey home.
7
Programs and initiatives
76+
Students in Comic Creation at Lancaster
100+
Years of combined team experience
2025
Silver Anthem Award
Why We Exist
People grow when they’re given support, tools and humanity.
Mass incarceration tears apart families and communities, yet offers little meaningful rehabilitation. Ben Free provides those resources — inside prisons, through re-entry and throughout the journey home.
Our programs help people heal, rebuild their identities and gain the skills to stay out of the system for good. For families, this is hope. For participants, it’s a chance to become who they were always capable of being.
What We Do
We meet people exactly where they are.
Re-entry
Mentorship, life skills, veteran support and creative training for a stable transition home.
Community
Advocacy, research and partnerships that strengthen families and push for humane, effective justice reform.
Core Programs
Led by people who’ve lived it.
2025 Silver Anthem Award · 76+ students
Comic Creation
A 16-week graphic-novel storytelling course, taught weekly at Lancaster State Prison under a California Arts Council contract with three-time Ringo Award winner Rylend Grant and Half-Evil Comics. Participants learn three-act structure, panel storytelling and worldbuilding, and each finishes an original 8- to 22-page comic script.
Prisons & re-entry
Hope & Mic
Creative writing, spoken word and performance led by slam poet Austin Alexander. Participants write, revise with peer feedback and perform their own work, building literacy and the confidence to speak in front of others.
Festival · UCLA
Unchained Voices Festival
In 2024 we co-hosted the Unchained Voices Restorative Justice Festival at UCLA's Ackerman Union with the RAP Lab, showcasing film, poetry, visual art and live performance from system-impacted creators.
A Movement Rooted in Lived Experience
From prisoner to poet, author and teacher.
Ben Frandsen spent 18 years incarcerated and rebuilt his life through education, writing and creative expression — earning a UCLA English Honors degree, an MFA from San Diego State and a 2026 Writing Freedom Fellowship. His journey is proof that rehabilitation is possible.
Recognized for partnership.
Comic Creation, our weekly program at Lancaster State Prison, won a 2025 Silver Anthem Award for Partnership or Collaboration in Education, Art & Culture — taught with Rylend Grant and Half-Evil Comics and funded through the California Arts Council.
See the AwardBe Part of the Movement
Get stories, program updates and ways to help, a few times a year.