Prisoners at Loddon and Middleton prisons in Castlemaine Victoria are countering the stereotype of what a male prisoner is like – these brawny tattooed men are reading kids’ books and not only that – they are reading them aloud and being recorded!
They are participating in a program initiated and funded by Friends of Castlemaine Library (FOCAL) ‘Read-Along Dads’ which helps the prisoners stay in touch with their children: the recordings are copied to CD and sent to the children with a copy of the book, so kids can listen to their dad read a bedtime story.
Begun originally to celebrate the International Year of Reading in 2012, the program has grown and flourished with more than 300 prisoners now reading stories for more than 400 kids.
Many of the prisoners involved have given feedback about their kids’ responses:
They [the children] love receiving the book and the CD, the importance of this program to me is that I can do something for my kids.
It’s hard to explain the feeling I get out of it when I know that at night, I’m the last voice he hears before he goes to bed.
The benefits are many. The prisoners feel that they are doing something positive for their kids – actively parenting, encouraging literacy – which feeds back into self-esteem, and the kids know that their father is thinking of them, which helps them through a difficult time of feeling isolated or even abandoned by their fathers. Also, both local and overseas studies have shown that programs like this which encourage family connections actually reduce recidivism. Men who have participated in such programs are less likely to re-offend after release from prison.
And surely this is what prison needs to do: reduce re-offending and rebuild lives. Rather than see prisons run as merely a place for punishment, society needs to know that something is being done in the prisons to rehabilitate prisoners and turn them away from crime.
Many of the men in the program tell us that they have never read to their kids before; some have never read a book – even a picture book – all the way through before. Some men, and not only prisoners, have been slow to participate in what has been seen as the woman’s role in parenting: they might play sport with their kids or engage in rough and tumble, but reading stories has more often been a mother’s job.
The ‘Read-Along Dads’ program quietly asserts that men can play a stronger role in the parenting of their children – and enjoy it.
This is one of those programs that benefits everyone. Women left to cope alone know that when their children’s father gets out, he will have some meaningful connection with his children, men who are incarcerated are not cut off from their children’s lives, and children who cannot hope to understand the complex interactions of crime and punishment have the comfort of their father’s voices reading to them at night.
Friends of Castlemaine Library (FOCAL) is currently crowd funding to support ‘Read-Along Dads’, find out more here