In recent years, many prisons, both private and public, have restricted prisoners' access to books. We want to do something about that.
The situation:
Prison inmates are being denied books under a variety of pretexts. Sometimes hardbacks are said to be used to smuggle drugs; sometimes paperbacks are considered to be a threat. Sometimes the books are said to be a hygiene issue or to have controversial content. Sometimes the prison library budget has been cut, or its hours and services have been restricted. Regardless of the stated cause, the effect is the same: prisoners cannot access books for education, enrichment, or entertainment.
The motivation:
Correctional institutions sell inmates JPay devices, which they refer to as “tablets,” for about a hundred dollars. These are purchased with money transferred from family and friends into the corrections banking system; those wire transfers involve fees of up to forty percent. A hundred-dollar device, then, can actually cost about $180. Inmates are told that the device is a tablet computer that can be used after their release, but in reality, it is mostly just a media player. It can be loaded with movies, music, or ebooks at a kiosk inside the prison, and its battery can be charged at home, but it does not have Internet access, common professional or personal apps, or any of the other features of a tablet…except the high price.
THE SoluTION:
We have taken requests from dozens of corrections librarians all over the country. We have curated boxes of books that meet the specific requirements of the secure facilities where they work, and also meet their inmates' requests. For example, a librarian at a prison that is also a high school asked for textbooks and instructional material; a librarian at a prison filled with chronically ill and elderly women asked for cozy mysteries and beach reads. We are starting to ship out these boxes, which were supported by material from our donors and the Cleveland Kids Book Bank, in hopes of giving some education and rehabilitation to incarcerated readers. You can sponsor a box on our donation page.