NCJ Number
195043
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 64 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2002 Pages: 72-75
Date Published
2002
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article describes a prison program called Long Distance Dads that seeks to unite incarcerated fathers with their children in order to build positive and influential familial relationships.
Abstract
Long Distance Dads (LDD) is a program for incarcerated fathers that helps participants learn positive family values, hone parenting skills, and develop a successful family integration plan, among other things. The program’s founder believes the LDD program is vital to the community because the absence of fathers has contributed to social problems and a general social breakdown. The program is also vital to incarcerated fathers and their children because it teaches these fathers how to repair some of the social and psychological damage caused by their incarceration. The goal of LDD is to work on character-building, including anger management, sacrifice, honesty, and self-control in order to make inmates better fathers while incarcerated and after release. The 12 week, small group program is facilitated by trained peer leaders who are inmates themselves. Over 600 inmates have participated over the past 2 years. It has proven to be a success and has expanded, since 1999, into 145 prison institutions in 26 States.