Title: Parenting from Prison, Inside Out
[ AUDIO ]
When one or both parents are in prison the whole family is, in a way, also imprisoned.
Family members are negatively affected in ways that worsen existing struggles and inequities. Today we’ll go to New York and New Hampshire to hear about programs for inmates and families that encourage rebuilding and maintaining relationships — despite being separated by prison.
The Osborne’s FamilyWorks program, the first in NY State, is a comprehensive parenting program in a men’s state prison founded in 1986. FamilyWorks operates as a counterbalance to the numerous challenges in keeping a family together, such as the high cost of collect calls to inmates, long distances to prisons.
The Storybook program in at the State Prison for Men in Concord, New Hampshire is different than at other prisons across the country. It’s run by the Department of Corrections (DOC), instead of a nonprofit or grassroots organization that can function as a link between the men inside and their communities outside. Our non-narrated piece shares some of the changes that these fathers experience, but also some of the stories and messages they read to their children.
Special thanks to Laura Roan, Jonathan Stenger, Elizabeth Gaynes, Brenda Maietta, Gabriella Kenner, Steuben Vega, and the Omnia Foundation.