'Reading Bedtime Stories Helped Me Survive Prison' via BBC

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'Reading Bedtime Stories Helped Me Survive Prison'

BBC: 3.23.2019 by Dougal Shaw

Lewis Hardy was struggling in prison, feeling isolated from his young family and increasingly "cold". Then he was shown a way of doing something that many parents take for granted - reading to his children - and everything began to change.

Lewis Hardy had just been released from prison and was getting a taxi home to see his two sons for the first time in nine months, when he got the call he dreaded.

"What are you up to?" a familiar voice enquired.

"I'm just in a taxi to see my boys."

"Don't worry about that," said his old friend. "See them tomorrow. Come to the pub with us lot."

But Lewis knew exactly what to say.

"I ain't ever going to the pub with 'you lot' ever again. My kids are more important."

Prisoners get a lot of time to think, Lewis says, and he'd figured out what was the right decision for him.

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So while going to prison is "never lucky", he says, he considers himself fortunate to have been signed up for a programme called Storybook Dads.

This gives prisoners with young children a chance to spend time in a studio recording bedtime stories, which are then sent to their families at home on CD or DVD.

"As soon as you walked in through the doors, it was just complete relaxation, you felt safe," remembers Lewis.  READ MORE >>