…stories give us a safe way to enter someone else’s River. Sometimes what we see there causes us to turn and look at our own realities.
Kronos Prison Reads are short stories developed around themes associated with Root-Cause Rehabilitation. They are not lessons. They do not tell inmates what to think. They tell stories.
A reader meets someone else. Encounters that person’s choices, beliefs, relationships, struggles, mistakes, and consequences. For a few minutes, the reader travels through someone else’s River of Time.
Perhaps something in that story causes the reader to stop. Think. Wonder. Perhaps turn around.
Root-Cause Rehabilitation begins with the possibility that lasting internal change may start when an inmate willingly faces the realities that brought them to prison. A story cannot cause that to happen. But a story can ask a question without asking it directly.
What would I have done? Why did he make that choice? What did she believe about herself? What happened to him? What didn’t happen to her? Why did that experience change him?
Stories create some distance between the reader and those questions. The story belongs to someone else. Until perhaps it doesn’t. That is where we believe a story may become a Root-Cause Rehabilitation seed.
These Prison Reads are only a beginning. Root-Cause Rehabilitation provides almost unlimited territory for stories. Choices. Consequences. Identity. Beliefs. Trauma. Dignity. Relationships. Responsibility. Community. Forgiveness. Anger. Shame. Trust. Belonging. What happened to me? What didn’t happen to me?
Each can become a story. Some stories may take five minutes to read. Others twenty. Some may entertain. Some may make the reader uncomfortable. Some may simply leave behind a question. None is intended to transform anyone. Transformation happens experientially, not intellectually.
But stories can plant seeds. They can introduce an idea. Challenge an old belief. Allow someone to recognize themselves in another person’s life. Perhaps cause a reader to look upstream for the first time. That may be enough. Because seeds don’t decide whether they grow. They only create the possibility.
Interested in reading one? Take a look at some of the Prison Reads we have written. We would be glad to send you any that are available in print.