Prison libraries - anyone know anything of have any experience with them?

I was listening to a radio broadcast about prisons and how men's and women's are different (the NPR host was advocating that Women's prisons need to allow for more diversity in dress b/c women care more about their appearance and they NEED to express themselves through their dress... - /Facepalm) and it got me thinking about prison libraries and especially the legal section and educational within them.

I know a lot of inmates often do studies while serving time, some spend time reading various books and some focus on legal studies. I'm wondering how prisons allocate $ for their libraries, how comprehensive they are, if they allow for transfer of books between outside libraries or other prisons, etc. If a prisoner wants a book do they have any means of requesting it either permanently for the prison or temporarily?

If the prison's have law books, do they provide books about state and federal law, case studies, etc? Are there any programs that allow for people to donate books to prisons or do prisons even need this types of thing?

Yes: www.sos.wa.gov... is an example. The library system does allow for Inter Library Loans beyond the system. The link will give you an idea of how the system works as a whole.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I believe that for general reading the books are donated from various charities and libraries. I would certainly hope the law books they provide are for the most part up to date.
I very well could be wrong so hopefully someone will come along and correct me if needed.

Oh no what did you do

originally posted by: Allaroundyou
a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I believe that for general reading the books are donated from various charities and libraries. I would certainly hope the law books they provide are for the most part up to date. I very well could be wrong so hopefully someone will come along and correct me if needed.

Libraries will certainly take donations, but few donated materials wind up in the collections. You wouldn't believe how many old, musty books are donated to libraries and just have to be thrown away. They can't even be used for pulp. Most donations are sold to gain funds to support the library. In the case of the Washington State Institutional Library System, they have a regular budget allocation for books and materials and do not depend on donations.

Not to diss donations. Our branch public library makes almost $100,000 per year off of donated books sold by the Friends of the Library. That money goes to support the library building and fund an endowment.

I hope I never get first hand experience in answering your question.

Some of the reasons I asked is because I know I always hear that prisons are under-funded, that they are often under staffed and have other financial issues so I wondered if that extended to "luxuries" (rolleyes) like libraries and books. Our county library system also has a HUGE yearly book sale from donated and books they are no longer "hosting" as a fund raiser and the one time I was there at the end of the sale I was told everything not sold was being disposed of - thrown away/recycled or whatever and it was about a semi load full of books.

Listening to the radio program I mentioned I was thinking that having a good library, especially access to law books if desired, would be something worth while to have in prisons and if it wasn't being done then that was what I wanted to know. It seems the perfect situation to allow as much access to education and expanding one's viewpoint and books are the best way to do that in that kind of environment I would think.

It all depends where you’re locked up at. Larger places have a library but a lot of smaller places let you send the inmates books. Check with whatever place you’re talking about.

I got my copy of Behold a Pale Horse in jail. Traded my mattress for it.

All I know about prison is don't drop the soap