The Alabama Department of Corrections has built playgrounds at two separate prisons in the Montgomery area.
The team decided to build the playgrounds after reading a study by the National Institute of Corrections, said Elizabeth Mautz, the deputy commissioner of Women’s Services Operations within the prisons.
The playgrounds are at Tutwiler Women’s Facility and Kilby Correctional Facility. The goal is to improve the child-parent relationship when kids visit their parents in prisons.
“If the child and the parent can play, they can really restore those bonds,” Mautz said.
The money for the playground came from a grant from the Office of Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The Alabama prison system used about $150,000 for each playground.
The grant is about $700,000. Mautz used the rest of the money to organize programs to help the parents.
Each playground has semipermanent recycled flooding. The Tutwiler playground has built-in toys designed to stimulate autistic kids.
“So yeah there was a lot of thought and planning that went into that,” Mautz said.