Serving Productive Time:
Stories, Poems, and Tips to Inspire Positive Change from Inmates, Prison Staff, and Volunteers

authors: Tom Lagana and Laura Lagana

Foreword by Mary V. Leftridge Byrd
Deputy Secretary, Washington State Department of Corrections

(Available Now.)

Our goal is to send at least one box of books to each prison, jail, and youth detention center in the USA. Each box will have 33 copies of Serving Productive Time, and is $238, which includes shipping and handling with in the Continental USA .Please add $50 for each box shipped to Canada.

Please help us send our books to inspire inmates in your state to do good while incarcerated and to better prepare for a successful release. We can send books directly to chaplains, counselors, teachers, librarians, and other correctional staff and volunteers who can make our books available to the inmates they serve.

Reserve books by contacting Tom@TomLagana.com or by phone 302-475-4825.

These true stories, poems, and other material demonstrate the benefits of providing constructive programs, educational opportunities, and creative outlets to those serving out their sentences. Statistics show that most people who are incarcerated will one day return to society, whether or not they are equipped to become law-abiding citizens, contributing members of our communities, and successful survivors of their reclaimed freedom.

Serving Productive Time is for those who have been incarcerated, whose loved ones are in jail or prison, who work or volunteer in a correctional facility, who have been the victim of a crime, and for those who understand that we all share the responsibility of helping others—no matter who they are, where they live, or what they have done. Incarceration affects everyone.

You will read about real people who are taking tangible steps to make positive changes in their own lives and reaching out to help others do the same. Whether through a helping hand from a prison volunteer or inmate, intellectual motivation from a teacher or mentor, courteous treatment by a correctional officer or other staff member, caring guidance from a counselor, or spiritual healing through a chaplain, you will be uplifted as you read about positive people who, under negative circumstances, are helping others serve “productive time.”

Some stories will help you gain a new perspective of those who are incarcerated. Others will help you understand the need to prepare inmates for release and support them afterward. Still others will help you appreciate your freedom and remind you we all make mistakes. And some will reaffirm the fact that, although many of us might be imprisoned in some way (either by a limiting belief, illness, or other situation), we all need a helping hand at some point in our lives to lift us up and show us the path to a new life.

Serving Productive Time will leave you with a renewed appreciation of the need for all of us to use our time wisely to make ongoing, positive changes in our lives and to bring others along with us in the process—whether we live or work inside or outside the razor wire.