Ossining program serves an outreach to prisoners’ young family members. “For many of the children in the neighborhood, they look up to us for all the wrong reasons. They look at prison as a rite of passage,” Sing Sing inmate Dario Pena said.
Pena has been in prison for 22 years and the program allows him to teach a valuable lesson to his 17-year-old stepson, Kristian Roman, who has been visiting Pena in prison for almost his whole life.
“It’s just a good overall experience to keep us on the right path,” Roman said.
Some of the kids who come to hear this message are young, like 9-year-old Kaliah Wynn from Brooklyn who is looking forward to welcoming her incarcerated grandfather back home.
“These guys that are involved in this process, this movement, their staying out of trouble, they’re looking into school, getting their education where they didn’t think they could before, and their kids are seeing the success,” Sing Sing Superintendent Michael Capra said.
