Reaching Through the Cracks...

 Reaching through the Cracks: 

Connecting Incarcerated Parents with their Children through Story

Incarcerated parents are one of the forgotten populations in our society.  Time, Inc. reported that in 2015, one out of 14 children in the United States had experienced parental incarceration.  As someone who worked with pregnant and post-partum addicts, I heard what many of the women had to say about their Baby Daddy. “He got his ass locked up…he’s no good…” and so on.  I wanted to give the men the opportunity to connect with their children in a meaningful way; to tell the rest of the story and become a positive presence in the children’s lives.

There were some hurdles to overcome when one wants to work within Maryland’s Department of Corrections and Public Safety.  There were grant proposals to write, funding to find, and then there was the question of finding space to conduct an 8-week workshop within the prison walls.  It took 2 years for the hurdles to be jumped, the funding to be acquired, the space to be found, and enough inmates interested in this new and untested program to sign up.

Now in its sixth year, Reaching through the Cracks has been offered to both men and women who are incarcerated.  I worked with exclusively women at the local detention center for the first four years and was able to gather information about those who completed the program 2 years after their release from jail.  Among those women who had completed, there was a 10% recidivism rate after 2 years.  By any measure, those are results worth celebrating.

Reaching through the Cracks is now offered exclusively at Eastern Correctional Institution in MD.  More posts to follow about the creativity that is awakened in the process of sharing one’s own story.