Family Literacy in Incarcerated Settings: Why ?
By its very definition, family literacy has an almost universal applicability. Adult education classrooms, pre-kindergarten programs, homeless shelters, libraries, programs for pregnant/parenting teens, and Head Start sites are but a few of the settings in which family literacy services thrive. Family literacy can be particularly appropriate for the incarcerated population, as well, considering:

Seven in ten prisoners perform in the lowest two literacy levels.(3)

On a continuum created by National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) researchers, literacy was divided into five levels. Adults at Level 1, the lowest skills level, “demonstrate difficulty using certain reading, writing, and computational skills considered necessary for functioning in daily life, and generally function at below the fifth grade reading level.” Adults at Level 2 have stronger skills than adults at Level 1, but still have “significant literacy needs.”

Furthermore, as many as 82% of inmates are reported to be high school dropouts.(4) No less significantly, research indicates that “at least twice as many young adults in the criminal justice system show signs of dyslexia as those in the general population.”(5)

Approximately 70% of incarcerated individuals are parents.

The number of children of incarcerated parents in the U.S. is most frequently cited at 1.5 million. However, “in 1994, there were 5.1 million persons under correctional supervision. At year’s end, on a given day, over one million persons in state and federal prisons, and nearly 500,000 were in city and local jails. There were some 20 million admissions and releases. So, we know that there are millions and millions of children with parents who are or have been incarcerated in prison or in jail.”(6)

3 Adult and Family Literacy in the United States: Key Issues for the 21st Century, White Paper for 1999 National Literacy Forum (National Institute for Literacy)

4 Statistic shared at the Eighth Annual National Conference on Family Literacy, Closing General Session (Louisville, KY: April 12, 1999)

5 “Dyslexia and criminal offenders.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (October 1996), 40:2.

6 From Center for Community Alternatives Internet site, http://www.dreamscape.com/ccacny. April 9, 1999

“The ideal setting is to have the adult and the child involved in the same process of learning, if that process has to take place in a prison, so be it.”
Family literacy specialist