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Religious Services
Reading Room
In 2000, former First Lady Hope Taft approached the Director about establishing a reading room for the children who visited their incarcerated parent at the Pickaway Correctional Institution. This idea spread across the state, and now the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction maintains children’s reading rooms in each of the 32 institutions. The reading rooms encourage family literacy by providing a pleasant and comfortable setting for both child and incarcerated parent. Each room is stocked with a wide variety of children’s books and has an inmate narrator who reads to the visiting children twice a day. The role of the inmate narrator is to read picture books to the children in much the same manner that children’s hour would be done at a public library. A variety of arts and craft supplies for the children are also available in most of the rooms. Many of the supplies and books are donated by employees and service organizations. This past year the Department served over 45,000 children. The inmate narrators worked over 32,000 hours in reading to and with the children.
Visit the Reading Room at SOCF
For general visiting information or to download a visitor application, go to http://www.drc.state.oh.us/web/visiting.htm.