(LifeSiteNews) — San Quentin Rehabilitation Center is one of America’s most infamous prisons. With a capacity of 3,000 and a prisoner population of 3,500, the facility contains many of California’s deadliest criminals and, not incidentally, is where the state holds its death row prisoners. Yet, recently, San Quentin held an unprecedented event: a father-daughter prom to connect incarcerated dads with their kids.

“In April, what was initially supposed to be a ‘Family Night’ turned into the first-ever Father-Daughter ‘Parent Prom’ held at San Quentin’s Rehabilitation Center’s chapel,” Aria Bell reported. “The event allowed fathers the chance to reconnect with or meet their daughters for the first time in a special way … This was made possible by Tram Nguyen, who has been incarcerated for 22 years and is one of the imprisoned members of The People in Blue, a prison reform advocacy collective.”

“I recognized that the majority of these people that came to prison, that committed crimes, also came from a dysfunctional home,” Tram Nguyen told KTVU. “A lot of the incarcerated people come from underserved communities, single-parent households.”

Nguyen is correct. In Pennsylvania in 2021, for example, over 80% of juvenile court dispositions involved youth from broken homes; 48% lived with a single mother while only 15.5% lived with both of their parents. Eighty-five percent of incarcerated youths overall come from fatherless homes, 20 times the national average; a Department of Justice survey determined that 39% of inmates had lived in mother-only households.

To respond to this problem, Nguyen assisted in the creation of an eight-week program called Family Communication Workshops to “support the 18 men who voluntarily participated personally but also to ‘strengthen communications and improve emotional intelligence and understanding within families,’” which Nguyen learned himself.

Nguyen explained that the program participants “walked through some of the most healthy aspects of family dynamics, like communication skills and emotional intelligence, helping everybody to understand where their emotions come from and how it leads to certain behaviors and how to cope in healthier ways.”

According to Bell, “In these classes, there were engaging lessons and conversations to help (the inmates) look inward and get to the root of some of the mental and emotional anguish that had impacted their dynamics with relatives. They pledged to keep consistent, open lines of communication with their daughters and the rest of their families.”

After the course, 16 dads were able to unite with their daughters for a “prom” that included walking a red carpet and an evening of dancing, games, and music:

This weekend the Chapel at San Quentin was transformed into a day of memories for their first-ever Parenting Prom. The father-daughter dance had 20 fathers enjoying the dance with their families. The ultimate goal being to bridge the family divide, heal, and promote family unity. pic.twitter.com/R2eO29p7so

— CA Corrections (@CACorrections) April 7, 2025

According to Morgan Hubbard, a member of the coalition that supported the endeavor, “The entire event was extremely touching and heartening. There was not a dry eye in the house for MOST of the day!!! Lots of happy tears and smiles.” Nguyen concurred, saying that “I was surprised how much attention and how big it got towards the end.”

God Behind Bars caught the moments on camera:

To ensure that the dads in the program were doing it for the right reasons, Nguyen explained, he had never told them about the grand finale. “I never let them know that we were going to have a family night,” he said. “So they did it because they wanted to improve their relationship with their family. I think they were confused at the same time because they were in prison. It was something that they did not expect that could really come through.”

At the end of the evening, there was a particularly moving moment. “The daughters all handed over the completion certificate to the father, and the fathers wrote a letter to express their appreciation and love for them, especially the renewed love and appreciation for them for participating in the workshop and what that meant for them,” Nugyen said. Many of the fathers and daughters broke down. And maybe — just maybe — some of the vicious cycles broke down, too.