Inside stories
It’s a chilly Thursday morning as a woman towing suitcases filled with children’s books stands outside the barbed-wire gates at Arohata Women’s Prison, waiting to be let inside and through the security screening.
The visitor is Kerryn Palmer, director of Bedtime Stories, a volunteer programme run at the correctional facility in Tawa, just north of Wellington, which helps mothers in jail connect with their children through reading.
Today, like every fortnight, a handful of prisoners will meet with volunteers in a room beside the prison library, where they’ll choose from an array of picture and chapter books to read aloud in front of a microphone, set up by a Bedtime Stories technician. From there, the mums’ recordings will be downloaded onto a CD and sent with the book to their children, who can listen to the comforting audio tale and read along with their mothers at nighttime.
For prisoners Brenda-Lee, 35, and Ana, 33, who met in Arohata’s drug treatment unit, Bedtime Stories means their little ones know they’re not forgotten. It also enables the women to connect with other mothers and, for a couple of hours, escape into thoughts and conversations about
