Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once wrote, “When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded. If anything, the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment.”
Student organization Kent Books to Prisoners believe the same. This is an organization that gets book requests from prisons and they pack them up and send them to the prisoners.
President of Kent Books to Prisoners and sociology graduate student, Bengt George, explained how he got involved with the organization.
“It was 2013, and I was playing in bands and spending time around a lot of time around the music scene in Kent where there were a lot of people with new and interesting ideas, and I found myself a little frustrated that very few people were putting those ideas into action so I ended meeting a few people who were involved with Kent Books to Prisoners which at the time was a relatively new thing. I started going and helping packing up books and they had a lot of zines that were written by prisoners and that just blew my mind so I decided to keep with it all these years as people have moved away,” said George.
As George has kept up with the organization their demand and library have grown tremendously. George explains that in the early days of the organization they would take just about any book people would donate. Leading to them receiving a very wide variety of books in their library.
“We would never refuse a book. For example, we got this one book that was about how to purchase and raise goats for making goat cheese and goat milk. I always that it was absurd, and I always argued that we should just get rid of it and make room for more books. But one day somebody asked us for a book on goat cheese production, and we finally got to send that book out,” said George.
They get requests for books from all over Ohio from the prisoners themselves and also from loved ones on the outside reaching out to Kent Books to Prisoners requesting books to be sent. The wide variety of requests makes for a need of all types of books.
“The most requested thing is dictionaries specifically paperback dictionaries so we can send them in anywhere because if you think about the difference between coming across a word there you’re not familiar with and having to go to the library at the prison during a certain time and having your own personal dictionary,” explained George.
Once they send the books out a lot of the times they will receive thank you letters or art back in return form the prisoners.
“Every time we get artwork sent to us it is memorable. Every time, which is quite often, people send us really nice letters or artwork or poetry that’s always just so cool.”
When packing the requested books they also include zines that have been written by people in prisons which include stories, poems and artwork.
Being able to escape into a book is something that free people tend to overlook as being a privilege when in fact. In an article for NBC News Christia Mercer states, “Given the current nexus of illiteracy, criminal actions and high recidivism rates, we as a society should be doing everything we can to make books more easily available and encourage reading behind bars. But the opposite is true.”
Kent Books to Prisoners makes it just a little bit easier for incarcerated people across Ohio. For more information, you can find Kent Books for Prisoners on Facebook.
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