The priorities of the host, i.e., the correctional facility, are safety and security. Its purpose is to insure the safety of the public, staff and inmates. To that end, an important chain of command exists as standard operating procedure. Educators must understand this chain of command: who must be consulted or notified for what activity.

Regularly scheduled meetings between educational and correctional staff are necessary to both incorporate and operate a family education model in a correctional facility. These meetings should include security staff, educators, counselors, supervisors, librarians, etc. Ongoing dialogue between educational and correctional staff may, in time, expand the scope of the original family literacy model.

Although processes differ between “hosts,” the basic building blocks of a family literacy project within a correctional facility remain constant. These building blocks — academic preparation, parent/child interaction, caregiver connection, and community linkage — are described in the following section.
The description of each building block is personified by the following hypothetical family and its situation:
“John” is incarcerated in a maximum-security facility that serves sentenced and unsentenced, adolescent and adult males and females. Nineteen-years-old, John tests at a fifth grade reading level. He is the father of two children, “Sam” (five months) and “Angie” (three years). Their mother is “Tisha,” who is 17. She dropped out of school after the eighth grade and works part-time at a local grocery store. She and her children live at her mother’s house.

Academic Preparation
(including Parent Empowerment)
The ultimate goal of any instructional program for incarcerated individuals, family literacy included, is to eliminate the likelihood of repeat criminal behavior and recidivism. Fostering inmates’ economic self-sufficiency, through legal and productive activities, is one way in which to lesson the likelihood of recidivism. Such economic self-sufficiency is specifically encouraged by the very definition of family literacy. “Literacy training that leads to economic self sufficiency” may be provided by a combination of:

  • adult basic education
  • ESOL
  • GED preparation
  • tutorial in high school subjects
  • Action for Personal Choice
  • Literacy Volunteers
  • library sessions
  • life skills

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