The Present and Future of Prison Libraries and Incarcerated Patrons
Everyone deserves access to information, and incarcerated individuals are no exception.
It’s time for change.
Prison Libraries and Their Challenges
In an opinion piece for The Hill, Moira Marquis states, “Reading isn’t a crime, but the state of prison libraries is a punishment.” These powerful words show that while considerable attention is given to the underfunding and censorship in public schools and libraries, more needs to be offered for the abysmal funding and censorship seen in prison libraries.
One example is Derek Trumbo, an incarcerated writer in Kentucky who said, “Let’s be honest, there’s not much one can glean from Westerns, romance and pulp novels,” and yet these are the only kinds of books “readily available on the shelves of the prison library.”
PEN America
A new report from PEN America shows that prison censorship is rising dramatically, depriving those behind bars of quality reading materials. The need for these is ongoing despite incarcerated people being the most illiterate population in the United States.
Censorship inspired the first Prison Banned Books Week. With its half-century Prison and Justice Writing program, PEN America is now partnering with nonprofits that send books to prisons to educate and mobilize the public to support actions and end prison censorship.
The Prison Libraries Act
One way to reach that goal is the recently introduced Prison Libraries Act. Prison libraries tend to be much smaller, with minimal holdings and older books in only a few genres. Thanks to the new act, this would change by allocating funds specifically for prison libraries to expand resources in US and territorial correctional facilities.
The Prison Libraries Act also provides grants for prisons to update materials, hire qualified librarians, and support digital literacy and career readiness. The legislation would be authorized at $10 million annually through 2029, focusing on creating libraries in prisons that otherwise would not have the means to scale their services.
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Serving Incarcerated Library Patrons
Library services to prisoners and jails, as well as nonincarcerated people impacted by the carceral system, have historically not been a central feature of the broader library community. The past several years, however, have witnessed a notable shift in visibility. The annual meeting of the American Library Association has devoted numerous sessions to justice initiatives, and published literature in this area has also started to gain traction.
Several major grant-funded initiatives have brought increased visibility in prisons. The New York Public Library received funding from the Mellon Foundation to seed Reference by Mail programs throughout many library systems.
Prisoners’ Right to Read
Participation in a democratic society demands unfettered access to current social, political, legal, economic, cultural, scientific, and religious information. Information and ideas available outside the prison are essential to incarcerated people. Learning to thrive calls for access to a broad range of knowledge to transition successfully to freedom.
The American Library Association asserts a compelling public interest in preserving intellectual freedom for individuals of any age held in jails, prisons, detention facilities, juvenile facilities, immigration facilities, prison work camps, and segregated units within any facility.
When free people, through judicial procedure, segregate some of their own, they are responsible for providing humane treatment and essential rights. Among these is the right to read and to access information. The right to choose what to read is fundamental, and suppressing ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Denying intellectual freedom — the right to read, write, and think — diminishes the human spirit of those segregated from society.
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Libraries and the Future of Incarceration
The US witnessed a steady decline in the federal and state prison population over the early decades of the twenty-first century, with a 2019 population of roughly 1.4 million men and women incarcerated at year’s end — the lowest since 1995. With COVID-19 shutting down critical sectors of society in 2020, criminal justice reformers urged a continuing focus on reducing prison populations. Many states now permit early release for nonviolent offenders. Some are even closing their facilities.
Still, the US will undeniably continue using incarceration as a sanction for criminal behavior at a much higher rate than in other Western countries, in part because of our higher rate of violent offenses. Consequently, a majority of people incarcerated in the US are serving prison sentences for violent crimes (58 percent). The most serious offenses for the remainder are property offenses (16 percent), drug offenses (13 percent), or other offenses (13 percent; generally, weapons, driving offenses, and supervision violations).
An important consideration is the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society after their sentence ends:
- Are they prepared to be valuable community members?
- What lessons have they learned during their confinement that may help them turn their life around?
- Will they succeed in avoiding a return to prison?
- What is the most successful path for helping returning citizens reintegrate into their communities?
Being incarcerated can be traumatic, often leading to mental health disorders and difficulty rejoining society. Imprisonment disrupts the routines of daily life and has been described as “disorienting” and a “shock to the system.”
Thus, the entire prison experience can jeopardize the personal characteristics necessary to be effective partners, parents, and employees once released. Besides lacking vocational training, education, and reentry programs, individuals face challenges in reintegrating into their communities.
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While the incarceration context constrains individual behavior and choices, the motivation for individuals to change their behavior is rooted in valuing their family and other positive relationships. In contrast, interpersonal relationships in prison are complex, as there is often a culture of mistrust and suspicion coupled with a profound absence of empathy.
Many psychologists believe that changing unwanted or harmful behaviors requires changing thinking patterns since thoughts and feelings affect behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) came about as a psychosocial intervention that helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions. It focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and developing personal coping strategies that target solving current problems.
Even so, the most robust CBT program that meets three hours each week leaves 165 hours where participants are entangled in the typical prison environment. Such an arrangement is likely to dilute the impact of therapy. To counter these negative influences, a new idea could be connecting CBT programming in prison with the existing therapeutic communities. These communities — in prison or the outside community — were established as a self-help substance use approach to rehabilitation.
Therefore, the recommendations of the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice include:
Short-Term Reforms
- Create Transforming Prisons Act
- Accelerate Decarceration Begun During Pandemic
Medium-Term Reforms
- Encourage Rehabilitative Focus in State Prisons
- Foster Greater Use of Community Sanctions
Long-Term Reforms
- Embrace Rehabilitative/Restorative Community Justice Models
- Encourage Collaboration between Corrections Agencies and Researchers
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