Transcriber: Silvia Rivera Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Alright! Good afternoon everyone.
I got a question for you and this is specifically for Tony.
How many out there wish that you could take a page
out of the story of your life
and rewrite it? Tony?
Right now? (Laughter)
Maybe, maybe delete it.
Believe me, this wasn't the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
For me, you know, I could think mabye one, two. Maybe more.
You know, for some people though,
they make a bad decision in their life.
And because of that bad decision
there are significant changes,
irrevocable changes to their life
and they can't go back and rewrite it.
So, these are some of the characters of our story today.
People that are incarcerated in our local prisons and jails.
There's about 2.3 million adults incarcerated in the US.
Now, it's the highest incarceration rate in the world.
In addition to that, there's another 4.8 million adults
that are on probation or parole.
So it's about 7 million adults
that are in the criminal justice system.
Now, as sad as that number is,
let me introduce you to the main characters
of today's story.
Children!
Children of incarcerated parents.
There's about 10 million of them
that have parents that are in some form of probation,
parole, incarceration in our criminal justice system.
They're the ones that are left behind,
when their parents go to jail.
They are the ones that feel separated, isolated.
They're the ones whose play dates
are suddenly cutt off,
they are ridiculed in school
and even if they want to see their parents
in the prison or jail,
those rights are very limited,
sometimes even violated.
So, you may ask, why keep them connected?
Why keep a parent that is incarcerated
connected with their child?
Why not just trade them in? Get new ones.
Well, here is what we know.
For the parents,
parent that maintains their bond with their child
they are less likely to have an incident
while they are in prison.
When they're released they are less likely to go back to prison
and they are less likely to violate parole.
For the children,
we know that the well-being of a child,
whether they're at home or at school,
is directly connected to the bond
between a parent and a child.
We also know that if they're connected with their parent,
while their parent is incarcerated,
once the parent gets out,
that reunification process is much more successful
and bottom-line is, study showed that
children that are connected with their parents
while they are incarcerated are just better off
than trading them in for new ones,
or dissolving that relationship altogether.
So, if the key is to be connected,
what do we do about it?
Here's the heroes of today's story.
Local group of volunteers in Ontario County
created a program at the jail there,
called the "Storybook Project"
and it's one way of maintaining that parent-child relationship,
while the parent is incarcerated.
And they do it
through the simplest and most cherished moment
between a parent and a child: story time.
This program is working. It's working for the parents,
it's working for the children,
it's working for the ciminal justice system,
and it's working for their community.
I'm going to show you a snippet
from a documentary that's being produced locally
by Low to the Ground Productions, in Crystal Pix,
called "Turn the Page".
It's a short ten minute trailer for the film
and what we've discovered
is that through producing this film,
you know, this showcase in the Storybook Project
that has turned into a much bigger story.
It's a story about children's rights,
their rights to maintain that connection with their parent
and how often times those rights are limited and violated.
It's a story about literacy
and how the parent-child bond through reading
gives a child so much more success in life.
It's a story about compassion, about hope,
and it's a story that really cries out to communities like ours,
to say, "Get involved,
figure out what's going on in your local prison and jail,
and do something about it."
So, let me show you this little portion of "Turn the Page".