Restorative Justice

Camp Caritas offers a week of activities and reflection for children of incarcerated parents. This camp seeks to ensure that these children forge their own path, guided by positive leaders and positive decisions.

Storybook Prison Ministry, located at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and also at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, gives inmate mothers and fathers the opportunity to record storybooks and personal messages on audio tape or their children. We hope to expand to other correctional facilities in the future.

           Storybook Project Facts       

“Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”        Matthew 25: 31-36

The Storybook Project officially began in 1998 at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois. The program was based on Aunt Mary's Storybook Program that began at the Cook County Jail in Chicago many years prior.  

The Mississippi Storybook Project also officially began in October 1998 at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl. We have since expanded the project to two other locations: the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and the Flowood Work Center.

Storybook Projects provide an important communication bridge between incarcerated parents and their children. They improve family relationships while providing an excellent opportunity to increase literacy skills among both parents and children. Currently, nearly one in four of all adult Mississippians have not graduated from high school.

How Storybook works: the incarcerated parent selects an age appropriate book from the prison library, then the parent practices reading the story. Once satisfied with the level of oral proficiency, parents read the book aloud on audiotape. Tapes are then mailed to the children along with the book so that children can read along and hear the words spoken by their own parents. These audiotapes greatly ease the stress of separation and help the children cope with normal feelings of abandonment resulting from an absent parent.

Support structures such as Storybook can lessen the feelings of abandonment, which, in turn, lessens the delinquency potential for children of incarcerated parents. Currently, children of incarcerated parents are at more than 500 percent higher risk of becoming incarcerated than children of the general public.

Just as family support can positively affect a recovering addict, so too strengthening an incarcerated parent’s relationship with his or her children can decrease recidivism when the parent is released.

• From January-June 2007, Storybook served 423 inmates and 1,169 children of inmates, requiring 72 volunteers and hundreds of hours.
• Seven out of ten (70 percent) of incarcerated women have children under the age of 18. Incarcerated mothers have an average of 2.11 children.
• More than six percent of female inmates are pregnant at the time of incarceration.
• Nearly 2.8 percent of all Mississippi children have at least one parent in prison.
• Nationwide, at least one out of 40 children have a father incarcerated (1.7 million). At least one out of 359 children have a mother incarcerated (200,000).
• Approximately 30 percent of inmate children suffer mental health problems, compared to 10 just percent of the general population.
• Between 1991-2000 the number of mothers in U.S. prisons increased by 87 percent.
• In 2003, 37 percent of the prison population did not have a High School diploma or GED. “Literacy Behind Bars,” National Assessments of Adult Literacy 2003 Report
• The average age of a child with an incarcerated parent is eight years old.
• Incarcerated mothers live an average of 160 miles from their children.
• Incarcerated fathers live an average of 100 miles from their children.
• Number of Mississippians serving sentences (May 2005): 15,803 Black Men, 6,917 White Men, 1,250 Black Women, 1,212 White Women
  

Approximately 95 percent of all incarcerated persons in Mississippi will eventually be released. The average sentence for an incarcerated mother in Mississippi is 18 months.

For more information, please contact LESM at 601-352-7215, or visit our Web site: www.lesm.org.