Challenges and Accomplishments in U.S. Prison Libraries

This article focuses on the evolution of prison library services in the United States and the changes in the roles and purposes of prison libraries over the last two centuries. The development of standards and guidelines for prison libraries under the leadership of the American Library Association and the American Correctional Association is discussed. The characteristics of the offender population are described as well as how prison libraries have responded to the specific needs of this special user group. The challenges of the unique prison environment are highlighted, especially as they relate to the delivery of library services. Examples of successful library services and programs are included, with descriptions of technology projects, resources for prison library staff, collection development policies, law library services, literacy programs, and resources to assist inmates with the transition back to society. Development of Prison Libraries Access to reading materials and information is provided in practically all federal and state correctional institutions in the United States. Such access is also provided in most local jails, although the level and quality of these services are not easily ascertained. Library facilities, library collections, and library services in the federal prison system fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Department of Justice. Each of the fifty states has its own department of corrections (or similarly named agency) with responsibility for the state correctional facilities and their libraries. Counties and municipalities administer jails and detention centers and often have agreements with local public libraries and/or community volunteer groups to provide reading materials and other library 491 lehmann/united states services to inmates. Larger jails often have designated library spaces but may not have professional librarians on staff. Offenders convicted of a federal crime serve their sentence in federal institutions; offenders convicted of state crimes serve their sentence in a state facility; defendants awaiting trial are incarcerated in local jails, and some convicted offenders with short sentences (mainly less than one year) may also serve their sentence in a jail. As of December 31, 2009, more than 1.6 million prisoners were under the jurisdiction or legal authority of state and federal correctional officials. At midyear 2009, about 1 in every 198 U.S. residents was imprisoned with a sentence of more than one year, a rate of 504 prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010b). At midyear 2009, 767,620 inmates were held in custody in local jails (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010a). The number of inmates in state and federal prisons has increased nearly sevenfold from less than 200,000 in 1970 to 1,518,559 by 2008 (The Sentencing Project, http:// www.sentencingprojecct.org). The United States experienced a major prison construction boom over the last twenty-five years that, however, appears to have slowed down somewhat over the last five years. Most of these new facilities include a library with general interest materials and legal collections. Hundreds of new prison librarian and support staff positions have been created but, due to the economic downturn over the last couple of years, most states have seen it necessary to eliminate or freeze many state positions, including prison librarians and teachers. The Directory of State Prison Librarians, maintained by the Maryland Correctional Education Libraries, shows the total number of prison libraries in all states to be about 950 (June 2010), with about two-thirds of these having designated library staff, not all librarians, however. Approximately twenty-five states employ a central prison library or institution services coordinator/consultant, either within the department of corrections or on the state library staff. A few states have regional correctional library coordinators (Maryland, 2009, November 10). Early prisons (aptly named “penitentiaries”) from the beginning of the nineteenth century had some collections of books for the moral and religious education of the prisoners. The “librarians” were almost all members of the clergy. The main purpose of reading was believed to be strengthening of character, religious devotion, and what we today would call behavior modification. By the mid-nineteenth century, penology (the study, theory, and practice of prison management and criminal rehabilitation) had become more scientific, and criminologists claimed that they knew the reasons for criminal behavior and, consequently, how to reform criminals. The Prison Congress in 1870 beckoned in the Progressive Period and the Prison Reform Movement, which advocated for rehabilitation instead of retribution, and for education and rewards for good behavior. The prison library was seen as one of these incentives. The content of 492 library trends/winter 2011 the prisoners’ reading would be determined by the prison administration, and only materials that furthered the reformative goals of the institution were allowed. During the first decades of the twentieth century, a number of studies on prison libraries were published by both prison reformers and the American Library Association (ALA), and in 1930, the American Correctional Association (ACA) issued a manual for prison libraries. The following year, Austin MacCormick, the distinguished prison educator, published The Education of Adult Prisoners, which states that “The possible values of directed reading are almost limitless, especially in the field of adult education. Reading must be moral and ‘directed’” (Maryland, November 10, 2009).1 The following four decades saw an unprecedented growth in prison libraries, mainly in the federal prison system. The rationale for the federal prison library development was stated by MacCormick in the 1950 American Prison Association’s Library Manual for Correctional Institutions: “The proper function and true value of an institution library are clear-cut and incontestable. It is not merely a time-killing recreational device. . . . Properly organized, directed, and utilized, the institution library is an instrument of wholesome recreation, of direct and indirect education, and of mental health. Books are for many prisoners a bridge to the free world; over that bridge they can pass to a better world with a broader horizon than they ever knew before” (p. 4). Unfortunately, it was not until the 1970s that this impetus for prison libraries took hold at the state level. A major factor contributing to the development of libraries in state correctional facilities was the Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA), authorized by Congress in 1966. LSCA set aside money for institutional library services (correctional and mental health facilities). The federal funds would be administered by state library agencies that were given a certain flexibility in developing eligibility criteria. Funding for institutional library services had maintenance-of-effort requirements, which contributed to a minimum level of local funding also being allocated. A considerable number of prison libraries and some librarian positions were established with LSCA money. When LSCA was replaced by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) in 1997, the new act no longer included designated funds for institutions. Another very important factor, leading to the development of law library collections in prisons was the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bounds v. Smith, 430. U.S. 817 (1977). After decades of litigation by prisoners to obtain venues for appealing their sentences and challenging conditions of their confinement, Bounds stipulated that all prisons must provide “meaningful access to the courts through people trained in the law or through law library collections.” The Federal Bureau of Prisons and most states chose the library option, and over the next two decades large 493 lehmann/united states sums of money were spent to purchase legal collections and to keep them updated. The mandate for legal materials always took precedence over the development and maintenance of the general library collections. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Lewis v. Casey decision (518 U.S. 804), narrowed the interpretation of Bounds and limited the parameters under which state correctional agencies were obligated to provide inmates with legal assistance and resources. Some states eliminated their legal collections and replaced them with access to paralegals; other states reduced existing prison legal collections, while maintaining the primary case law, federal and state codes, and administrative rules. Around the year 2000, some state correctional agencies began to convert their print-based legal collections to electronic collections and made them available on CDROM and DVD. Today, the CD-ROM/DVD collections are rapidly being replaced by Web-based “correctional” legal information products, developed by the major legal publishers. Access to these Web-based resources, of course, presupposes that a secure network infrastructure is in place and that inmates are permitted to use computers. To guide the development of general prison library collections (as opposed to legal collections), the American Library Association in 1981 issued Library Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions, a publication endorsed by the American Correctional Association (ACA). These standards emphasized building collections according to the needs and interests of the prison population and developing community connections. A new and greatly expanded edition of the ALA Standards was published in 1992, Library Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions, and the Library Standards for Juvenile Correctional Facilities came out in 1999. Both are tools for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of library services and define acceptable levels of service. Working groups with broad knowledge and experience in the field—professional librarians and correctional administrators—developed these documents. The standards for adult institutions emulate the public library model and subscribe to the philosophy that library services “shall ensure the inmates’ right to read and their free access to information.” Further, services shall encompass “the same variety of material, formats, and programs as available in the outside community. . . .” The document covers all aspects of library operation, including the integration of new information technology. The sections on technology and certain other parts of the standards for adult institutions are now dated, and a new edition of this pivotal document is currently under preparation. The quantitative standards are based on data collected in a 1990 national survey of prison libraries. Both documents include such fundamental documents as the Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read Statement. Although no research has been conducted to ascertain to what extent individual state correctional agencies and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have made use of the ALA standards as 494 library trends/winter 2011 a reference tool during the planning process for new prison facilities, the author used this document while working with the planning team for each new correctional facility built in the state of Wisconsin during the 1990s and early 2000s. As a result of this cooperation, all the newer correctional institutions in Wisconsin have library facilities planned specifically for library functions and also received a fairly adequate start-up budget for collections and technology. Offender Populations and Their Needs Today, professional and paraprofessional staff work in both adult and juvenile institutions and their patrons range in age from school children to older adults. The fastest growing inmate group is the elderly, primarily due to increasingly longer sentences, less frequent use of parole, and the higher percentage of the incarcerated population being violent offenders. Many facilities are overcrowded, so nonviolent offenders are more likely to be supervised in less restrictive community settings. The incarceration rate of racial/ethnic minorities is disproportionately high, and the percentage of nonor limited English-speaking inmates is growing, primarily Hispanics and Southeast Asians. In some states, the percentage of inmates with drug and alcohol treatment needs is as high as 60 or 70 percent. A large number of inmates (between 50 and 60 percent) have not completed high school, and many adults and juveniles associate the traditional school system with a long string of academic and personal failures (U.S. Department of Education, 2001, pp. 15–16). This fact is, of course, related to the offenders’ lack of vocational skills and their inability to find and maintain gainful employment in today’s technology dominated job market. The next logical step in this vicious circle is often the commitment of a crime. One can safely say that incarcerated persons have a large number of unmet needs, which translate into a high demand for information, learning materials, and self-improvement resources; the library, in cooperation with other prison programs, can play a vital role in meeting these needs. An inmate who wants to use his/her time constructively is likely to become an avid library user, and when time comes to prepare for release, the prison library can provide a wealth of job and career related materials, as well as useful community information. Challenges and Solutions In the following sections, the author will highlight some of the main challenges facing all prison library staff and will describe how some librarians and prison administrators have developed creative solutions to inherent problems and have even managed to create some exceptional services and resources. In doing so, the author will draw upon her personal knowledge of the prison library situation in Wisconsin, as well as information 495 lehmann/united states obtained through contacts with prison librarians in a couple of other states (mainly Colorado and Maryland). The Prison Environment The prison library does not function independently but operates within the larger correctional environment, whose mission and security policies often conflict with the library profession’s code of ethics and its belief in free access to information. The prison environment is an untraditional and inhospitable territory with priorities that challenge “traditional” librarianship and philosophies. Consequently, the most important challenge to librarians who work in prison is how to provide information freely in a tightly controlled environment with rules and regulations governing almost all aspects of daily life. How does one encourage library patrons to make choices about their reading matter and the pursuit of individual interests, when in almost all other aspects of their lives they have no autonomy? How does one meet the information and diverse reading needs of a large multicultural community whose members have involuntarily been forced to live together? In a major 1974 U.S. study of prison libraries, Marjorie LeDonne observed: “I have come to realize that while space, time, money, training, and adequate support staff are all important, the key to quality correctional library service is the turn of mind, the energy and the sense of dedication which the librarian . . . brings to the job” (LeDonne, 1977, p. 69). In other words, it takes a very special person with not only a sound educational background, but also a great number of specific human qualities, including assertiveness, flexibility, patience, emotional stability, helpfulness, sincerity, high tolerance for stress, and a sense of humor. Librarians are service providers, no matter where they work. In the prison milieu, the antagonistic mentality of the “powerful against the powerless” is pervasive. By being responsive to needs and interests, librarians can have much impact on the inmates’ lives, while exemplifying the exception to the hostility rule. Library staff can provide one of the few places in the prison where the inmate can feel at ease and be confident that his requests will be attended to. Responsiveness to user needs goes a long way to create credibility and appreciation; and over time, the positive impact of the library will be recognized by both the inmates and the prison administration. Since most correctional libraries in the United States are one-person operations and are not all managed by a professional librarian on-site, having access to training and professional resources, as well as the opportunity to communicate with other correctional library staff, is of para-