Storytime Lets Fathers Form Bonds From Behind Bars
Across the country, inmates are distance-reading bedtime stories to their kids and finding their own paths to redemption.
Credit...Lorenzo Gritti
March 11, 2021
Greg Williams, 45, doesn’t remember the first book he read to his daughters in 2006, but he remembers picking the shortest book in a stack, hoping he could get to the end without crying on camera. He imagined his girls in their pajamas, tucked into bed, listening. As he turned each page, he imagined that he was there, too.
At the Descanso Detention Facility in Southern California, a dozen men waited with tough-guy facades and children’s books in hand. They were participants in a program that allowed incarcerated parents to read to their children, albeit far removed from their bed sides. An unassuming beige room at the jail became a makeshift production studio, with men taking turns in front of a tripod-mounted camera.