Doing Family: Imprisoned Parents as Collaborators

The focal point of this article is the design of a game-based tool for dialogue (‘Dads’ Round’) developed incollaboration with the Danish Prison and Probation Ser-vice for a Parenting Program. The tool is unique insofaras it includes stories collected from prisoners’ childrenabout their troubled relationship with their fathers. Byevaluating thetool throughinterviews with incarceratedfathers,wedemonstratehowtheyworktogetheraspeersto assess how such a tool works to help assume par-enting roles during incarceration. Through the fathers’statements, the stories they share and their collaborativescaffolding, we are able to identify the tool’s poten-tial effect on parenting practices as well as pinpointstrengths and weaknesses of the tool. Our study sug-gests that new notions of parenting and doing familymust be carefully considered in the design of parentingprogrammes