Prisoner Education
Learning is a core intervention towards rehabilitation: since May 2000 we have provided education to prisoners in Dunedin, and now deliver several programmes at the Otago Corrections Facility. The importance of literacy and numeracy underpins all our programmes as it affects self-esteem and the ability to participate fully in our society.
We currently deliver:
Learning opportunities which encourage prisoners to get the taste of learning, be successful and get hooked into wanting further learning.
Story Book Dads
Prisoners read children's books onto DVD to be sent home to their children. Literacy underpins this programme and supports maintaining family connections. Children and partners follow the pictures in the book (on screen) while hearing their Dad's voice reading the story. The programme is expanding to enable the men to also develop confidence, knowledge and skills with using computers and recording technology by producing the stories themselves.
“Rukutia te taura tangata ki te pou-whare
Motu te taura! Motu atu te tangata.”
Maintain the family links. If the links are broken the individual is
lost.
More information
> VIEW a PDF of our presentation to the NZ Literacy Forum 2012
[opens PDF file, 0.6MB]
>
VIEW a TVNZ News item about Story Book Dads
[link to TVNZ website]
> VIEW an Arts Access Aotearoa item about Kaupapa Maori Storybook Dads
Next Steps
The purpose of this programme is to prepare the men, who are in the self-contained living flats, for the next steps in their lives - to be able to live independently and fit back into their communities and families when they are released.
This includes job preparation skills, personal presentation and home living skills. These are important skills to have as self-esteem tools, but also to prevent recidivism. An example of this would be to be able to cook for different types of people (e.g. vegetarians), and realising that home cooking can save money, give great personal satisfaction in the preparation process, and be more healthy with better taste than fast foods.
