Reading isn’t a crime, but the state of prison libraries is a punishment

Dylan Jeffrey is an avid reader incarcerated in New Mexico. Once a week, only 10 incarcerated people are able to visit the prison library, a closet-sized collection of books that tend to be outdated and cliched. 

“How insane is that?” he asked when interviewed by my organization, PEN America.

He is not alone in his frustration over access to books and other reading materials.

Derek Trumbo, a writer incarcerated in Kentucky told us, “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.”

While lots of attention is being paid to the underfunding for and censorship in schools and public libraries, there has been little attention to the abysmal funding for and censorship in prison libraries.

A new report from PEN America shows prison censorship is rising steeply, robbing those behind bars of reading materials on everything from exercise and health to art and even yoga, often for reasons that strain credulity. The lack of access to reading materials thrives despite the fact that incarcerated people are the most illiterate population in the United States.

This censorship has inspired the first Prison Banned Books Week, which ran through the end of October. PEN America, with its half-century-old Prison and Justice Writing program, is partnering with nonprofits that send books into prisons to educate and mobilize the public to support a series of actions to end prison censorship.

One avenue toward 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. The act would change this by allocating funds specifically for prison libraries to “expand library resources in U.S. state and territory correctional facilities to advance reintegration efforts, reduce recidivism, and increase educational opportunities for incarcerated citizens.”

The bill is an attempt to rectify the sheer lack of reliable access to library services and books in prisons. Introduced by Reps. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), the bill is endorsed by PEN America and 16 other organizations.

Michelle Dillon, a librarian and volunteer with Seattle Books to Prisoners, one of the organizations endorsing the legislation, told PEN America prison libraries have been underfunded for a very long time. The Prison Libraries Act, she said, reinvests in the long-neglected capacity of prison libraries. 

“This bill will benefit our communities by providing for more staff to run programs, updated reading materials for incarcerated learners, and new partnerships with local libraries, all of which will increase information equity where it’s needed the most,” Dillon said.

The Prison Libraries Act addresses the dearth of reading materials in prisons through many avenues, including allowing prisons to partner with local public libraries, and requiring that prisons accept donated books — which many facilities currently deny. 

These cost-saving measures are supplemented by new allocations, necessary to address grossly inadequate materials and crumbling infrastructure. Ultimately, like all investments in the social good, these monies will return dividends as recidivism rates decrease, lessening our society’s reliance on incarceration.

While education programming is widely acknowledged as a key to reducing the likelihood of someone returning to prison after release, literacy is the key component of a stunning 48 percent reduction in recidivism. 

Our culture demands a high degree of literacy for everything from employment to obtaining housing. People need, on average, 40 hours of reading at each reading level in order to advance to the next one. This is why public schools are increasingly devoting school time to silent, sustained reading and why prisons offer ample opportunity for increasing literacy and learning how to read. Yet, it’s challenging if not impossible to improve reading skills without books.

Jeanie Austin, a jail librarian and co-principal investigator on San Francisco Public Library’s efforts to expand information access for incarcerated people, told us that this is a concern for society at large. 

“The lack of access to books and library services inside of prisons has a ripple effect on the larger society. Not only directly, when families and communities are made to bear the cost of providing access to books for their incarcerated loved ones, but also through the ongoing cycle of oppression in which incarcerated people are restricted from access to materials that can help them to maintain a sense of self, to engage with larger society, to potentially prepare for reentry and to write, create, and dream.”

Limiting education and a positive sense of self contributes to the country’s abysmal recidivism rate, which affects three-quarters of incarcerated people. The costs of recidivism are extremely high, not only financially but through the loss of creativity, enterprise and skills society is deprived of when young people are not working.

The Prison Libraries Act would tangibly improve the lives of incarcerated people immediately. 

Jeffrey writes, “As I keep making my lists of books I’m unable to read, I can only urge folks out there to please contact your senators and governors and legislators. Society isn’t being done any favors keeping literature out of the hands of prisoners.”

Moira Marquis, Ph.D. is the senior manager of the Freewrite Project in PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing program.