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Online debate:

Are arts rehabilitation projects in prison a good idea? Or are they a waste of tax payers money?

Arts Council England

Each young offender in England costs the taxpayer more than 拢100,000 a year, while the Ballads of Reading Gaol project received a 拢14,000 grant that including working with 20 young offenders.

Liam reads out his poem on cars

Nevertheless, do you think is this a waste of time, effort and money?

Listen to a round-up of the debate on the Andrew Peach breakfast programme below and have your say at the bottom of this page:

Scroll down to watch videos and to read or listen to the poems.

Reading Prison was made infamous by Oscar Wilde's haunting Ballad, published in 1898.

Now, a team of poets has been running poetry and creative writing workshops in the criminal justice system.

As well as working with men inside Reading jail, and those recently released, the poets also worked in the Youth Offending service with youngsters at risk of going 'inside'.

John Hegley

The updated ballads reflect life for offenders in 2009, and cover a huge range of themes including bereavement, fractured relationships and parenthood.

Project poets John Hegley and Tim Turnbull have been taken aback by the sheer amount of writing being done in Reading Prison, and by the interest in writing poetry and rap lines.

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John Hegley was so impressed, he even wrote this poem to celebrate the project:

I said to the lad in the gaol
Your poems put wind in my sail
You could make it your job
We don't want you to rob
All the world of your chance
to dance in the thrill of your gale.

These lads sometimes need to be told
How their poems are pieces of gold
With a piece of our aid
They can sharpen the shade
of the blistering history they hold
It helps none of us if we should fail.

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One of the overall aims of the project was to reduce re-offending, encouraging participants to reflect on their lives (much as Oscar Wilde had done), through a belief that understanding your story, and the part others play in it, is an important step in moving forward positively in your life.

The poems are also a powerful expression of the effect that crime has on the people who perpetrate it.

Hear the background to Luke's ballad and hear him read out Valentine's Day:

Artists have also recorded their version of written ballads as part of the project. Here, you can listen to singer James Ewers from My Luminaries perform a poem by Liam, and then the Thames Valley Chorus perform their version of Liam's Stand And Fight:

Hear a poem by 'Michael', a former violent gang member who spent six years at Reading Prison:

Hear听poems and raps on the them of loss, including young people who've suffered loss, including Jamie's rap about his friends dying:

Watch three videos on the Ballads project here:

Download the poems and the stories behind them here:

Read two John Hegley poems here: