This article examines family education programs for strengthening family ties between prison inmates and their families. To advance the development of a conceptual basis for family education in prisons, we suggest a classification based on three criteria: the program purpose, the program content, and the level of interaction between professional and participant. We give an example of a family education program at an optimal level of involvement and provide evaluation data about the program. These data provide more information about the internal workings of the family system to provide guidelines for more appropriate, useful content and interaction in family programming.
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