 It's not just sort of some sort of hippie dream of giving inmates guitars, it's something that really works. For thousands of inmates nationwide, music is their only escape. Punk rock forefather Wayne Kramer has put the power of music in the hands of the incarcerated. What art can do is restore you. It can restore you in your relationships with other people in the world. People on the outside, your family, your friends, your community. Those are the things the prisons strip away from you. I'm Steve Vasquez with Uproxx and I'm here at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco to see what impact jail guitar doors is having on the inmate population. I'm Wayne Kramer and for a few years I was known as 00180190. My offense was an economic drug crime. I was an illegitimate capitalist. I aided and abetted the sale of cocaine. For my offense I was given a four-year federal prison term. I had known Wayne for a long time as a musician, as an activist, but when Wayne stood before the inmates at Sing Sing Prison, he really spoke in their language in a both empathetic way and in a commanding way about the power of rock and roll to liberate the soul. This is the education building and we're going to see how the songs are coming and then we're going to play them all for each other. The skill that they learn here is also how to listen and something strange happens when you begin to listen. You start to be able to be heard as well. It's a two-way street. What we do in jail guitar doors is pretty simple. We provide people that work in corrections that are willing to use music as a tool for positive change. We provide them with the instruments, those tools, and in the songwriting workshops we task the students with finding a way to express complex feelings that's non-confrontational. They are transformed from someone who considered themselves a loser or a crime or a bedspace or a number to somebody that just added some beauty to the world. It's the beginning of establishing a new identity outside of the prison identity. You have to only eat with your group. You can only talk to your group, your race. So if you're black you can only talk to the black guys, you can't talk to the whites or the Hispanics or any other family. You have to be a certain way. You have to be tough, you have to be the toughest guy. You seem like such a nice guy. I can't imagine you putting on this tough guy. It took me a long time. It took maybe eight years to break that down. And if you don't be that way then maybe you might lose your life. You're going to be in a world of trouble. So this program helps you break that down and get back to how you're going to be when you get society. I found out that a lot of these guys have the same issues that I have. They just need somebody to talk to, somebody to open up to. To see some of these guys move to tears over a song or just the fact that somebody took the time to do something and treat them with value was moving. Today our guitars are in 105 American prisons. The guitars that we distribute can not only be the key that unlocks the prison cell, it can be the key that unlocks the prison gate and it can be the key to unlock the rest of your life. Because of this class, when you see someone like Hispanic or white on the yard that you've worked with in the class, you're able to just say what's up. I'm able to say what's up. And no one gives you shit about it? No one gives me because I don't care anymore. Really? This class makes you feel like I don't care what people think. I don't care what they say. That's not who I'm going to be. Wow. And once you start living like that then you're free. You're free. Even though I'm locked up I'm free right now. Free as a bird. Wow man. I find that music can really put steel in the backbone of those who are standing up against injustice and wind in the sails of movements for a more decent and just country. The reward is getting to do it. Getting to actually do that work. That's the payoff. If you don't do it, who's going to do it? If not me, who? If not now, when?