When I was in prison, I approached a hard-nosed looking guard and asked, "Sir, do you know where I might find a book to read?"

He turned around, glared at me and said, "Do I look like a fuckin librarian to you?"

"Hey!" I replied emphatically.

He jerked his head back around and gave me a stern look, and retorted just as emphatically, "What!"

Then I calmly said, "Sir, it doesn’t cost a thing to be nice."

The big brute started to say something, then stopped himself and turned away. He turned back again and started to say something else and stopped himself again, frustrated. Looking like he didn’t know what to do and after a look of exasperation, he suddenly softened and with a sigh he said, "You’re right, I’m sorry. You didn’t ask for the way I spoke to you," then he said that he didn’t know where I could find a book.

The Prison Library Project under the auspices of The Claremont Forum is making a herculean effort to provide reading material to inmates in state and federal prisons. Whereas Rick Moore, the director of the project, is mainly interested in providing reading material focusing on spiritual conditions emphasizing personal growth, self esteem, various religious traditions, metaphysics, and self-exploration, he also makes an effort to supply a wider range of interests, such as books on poetry, literature, fiction, and suspense--true crime excluded.

Having been an inmate myself in the California Department of Corrections, I wanted to know how long after an inmate requests a book does it take for the project to respond. Rick said from three to five weeks. Boredom is the order of the day in at all levels of the prison industrial complex. The value of books to inmates is without parallel, excepting formal education. Inmates stand a better chance of becoming education-oriented when provided with reading material. The education of inmates becomes a societal asset because recidivism rates drop as a result--many inmates, myself included, pursue college degrees either while they are incarcerated or upon their release. For example, according to Chevigny "between 1974 and 1979, three programs in Alabama, Maryland, and New Jersey reported substantial reductions in offender-students’ recidivism, compared with standard return rates. These reductions ranged from a drop from 57 to 37 percent in one case to a dramatic difference of from 80 to only 10 percent in another program."

I was personally acquainted with several inmates during my incarceration who turned to spiritual and/or religious orientations, which is why bibles are requested as frequently as dictionaries. Unfortunately, most inmates abandon their spiritual and/or religious interests when they’re released; however, their education due to reading material while they were inside, makes them better prospects for a spiritual life in the future.

The project has about 100 volunteers a month helping out who not only provide reading material to inmates, but also to prison chaplains and librarians, study groups, drug and alcohol recovery groups, survivors of domestic violence, and local support groups for HIV/AIDS. To volunteer call (909) 626-3066 or send an email to claremontforum@hotmail.com. They receive nearly 200 letters a week from inmates and they mail over 30,000 books, magazines, and audiotapes every year to prisons, jails and detention centers throughout the United States.

Being a non-profit organization, The Prison Library Project is funded primarily by donations from publishers, bookstores, and private individuals. Events such as book sales, sponsored by the Claremont Forum, also contribute funding. For anyone interested in making financial contributions or donating books, can do so at The Claremont Forum, 111 S. College Ave #1, Claremont, CA 91711 (located behind the Courier building for those dropping off books). For a tax receipt, donors are asked to include their name and address in the delivery. The Prison Library Project is a 24-hour operation in that boxes and bags of books appear on their doorstep at all hours.

Endnotes:

Chevigny, B.G. (ED). (1999) Doing time: 25 Years of prison writing. New York: Arcade Publishing, p. 108.