Donate Your Books to Prisons: What, Why, and How by Becky Stone

Prison Libraries

www.bestcollegesonline.com

When you research how to donate your books to prisons, the same phrase comes up over and over again: that books are a lifeline for prisoners.

As someone who is fortunate enough that most of my experience with the prison system has happened through Netflix, I took that to mean simply that when you’re in the same small space day after day, it gets boring. But providing prisoners with books offers so much more than relief from monotony.

According to a Baltimore Sun article about Maryland’s prison libraries:

Many who are within a year or two of release use library services to prepare for re-entry — to get their GED, to improve their vocabularies and language skills. The recidivism rate in the United States varies, from 50 percent to as high as 67 percent in some states, and there are two main reasons for that level of failure: the employment challenge facing ex-offenders on the outside and the lack of preparation for re-entry on the inside.

Read more.... 

Rikers Island gets unofficial New York Public Library branch by Alison Fox

July 27, 2016

The library at the Rikers Island correction facility has a wide range of books, including "The Hunger Games" series and "To Kill a Mockingbird." (Credit: Craig Ruttle)

 

The (unofficial) 93rd branch of the New York Public Library is now open for business — and you can’t take the subway to visit it.

That’s because the small-but-well-stocked collection is the first permanent public library on Rikers Island.

And the collection, which is housed in the women’s Rose M. Singer Center and sits below a poster of Beyoncé as Rosie the Riveter, is as varied as the people who will be reading from it: “The Hunger Games” books share space with “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Les Misérables,” and an extensive James Patterson collection. 

“It’s amazing the city services that are available in the community; many of those we want here on the island,” said Department of Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte. “This is a good step to introduce inmates to the value of education, the value of reading.”

The library holds 1,200 books — spanning everything from comics to sci-fi, from Spanish language works to nonfiction classics — and it will be open every Tuesday for about six hours each day. Read more...

 

Yes, Chief Justice Roberts, a prison library can be a ‘very good library

By Valerie Schultz December 17

Valerie Schultz works as a library technical assistant for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Chief Justice John Roberts in Washington in 2013. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., I’m surprised at you. Didn’t your mother raise you better than to insult whole groups of people?

For those who are wondering, I’m talking about a remark the chief justice made last month during oral arguments in Bruce v. Samuels, a dispute about federal prisoners paying legal fees. Here I quote from Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog: When reminded that prisons maintain libraries, “Roberts then shot back, presumably sarcastically, ‘I’m sure they are very good libraries, too.’ ”

I run a library at a state prison for men in California, and I can attest that it is indeed a “very good library.” My library is tasked with assuring that inmates have access to the courts because, although they are convicted criminals, they retain certain civil and human rights. We provide them with access to legal forms, typewriters, law books and computers that can be used to research case law and the myriad rules of the courts, as well as a daily legal newspaper. We make available typing paper, numbered pleading paper and envelopes for filing court documents. We make the required number of copies of outgoing legal work. We weigh documents to determine the number of stamps needed for mailing. In short, we have everything that an inmate acting as his own lawyer needs to bring his concern to the attention of the appropriate court. Read more...

Prison Library Offers A Place To Escape by NPR Staff

May 29, 2011
Some 1,700 residents of the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland make very good use of their library. Most inmates will never win early release, so the library becomes a place to improve reading skills, write a letter home, watch an instructional video on auto mechanics or just escape, mentally. Host Liane Hansen visits the prison to talk with longtime prison librarian Glennor Shirley. Shirley runs the libraries for the entire Maryland prison system.

Related articles

• 'Running The Books' In A Prison Library : NPR (nylibrariansmeetup.blogspot.com)
• Battle over library closures intensifies - Telegraph (nylibrariansmeetup.blogspot.com)
• Recruiting for Prison Libraries (ALA) :
  Recruiting for Prison Libraries Interface Volume 27 Number 1, Spring, 2005. Interface is the quarterly newsletter published by the ASCLA division of the ALA. Glennor Shirley takes a look at the reasons why prison libraries may have problems recruiting information professionals and strategies for overcoming these problems.