The Prison Book Ban

I’m actually hoping, whilst studying for my masters next year, to undergo a fieldwork placement in a prison library. Whether this is actually possible is a different kettle of fish. I won’t go into the reasons for wanting this, but I do often look around prison librarian blogs, news and related affairs and this caught my eye recently. Chris Grayling, conservative and current Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice has been rattling cages recently with his ban on books being sent into UK prisons.

His defence, as I can gather from the various articles, seems to be, in short, that books can be used to smuggle in contrabands. Prisoners have access to reading material through their prison library or can earn money to buy books. Prisoners are allowed up to and including twelve books in their cells at any time.

Now, even to me – a person with limited knowledge of the prison system - that seems like weak reasoning.

According to politics.co.uk most ‘entry’ level or ‘standard’ level inmates will earn no more that roughly £15 per week. Most will earn less. Now even I, an admitted bookworm, wouldn’t be spending my £15 per week on books, if I was in prison. As a child or partner of someone in jail, it would upset me that I couldn’t send any gifts, as the ban covers more than books, and I imagine it would impose restrictions on any charities sending in supplies to aid rehabilitation through reading etc.

Inmates are allowed access to the library, good behaviour permitting, for 30 minutes per week. In reality understaffing can often limit this. Again it boils down to money: If public libraries are struggling with cut-backs, then I imagine prison libraries are experiencing the same troubles. I quote from an article in the telegraph:

Prison libraries are funded by an agency of the Ministry of Justice, which gives the money to the prison’s local public library authority, which in turn provides a library service to the prison. According to Ministry of Justice guidelines, the size of the stock should be 10 times greater than the prison population, and the stock should be replaced for wear and tear every five years. If this really happens, then prison libraries are as well-stocked as our public libraries.

Does this mean, with dwindling money for library services, that soon library authorities will have to basically decide which they put their money, their staff, their books and resources, into - our prison or public libraries? Which would you choose? It seems simple on the surface: prison inmates are in prison for a reason. Why should they be allowed library privileges over the general, law-abiding public? I understand this. It is a reasonable argument. However of the prison population of England and Wales, roughly three quarters cannot read or write (according to CILIP). There’s a great article from The Guardian that mentions that if a prisoner goes straight into a job upon release he/she has only a 10% chance of reoffending, compared to 90% if they don’t. Now, if you can’t read or write, what chance do you have of getting a job upon release? I don’t have a percent for that, but I bet it doesn’t involve double digits. To help rehabilitation through education whilst in prison, to help them learn basic reading and writing often requires books. Sometimes expensive books that £15 per week is not going to pay for. And an understaffed, underfunded library cannot afford either. Thus a stalemate is reached. Inmates serve their time, and go back into the world still illiterate, the figures against them that they’ll be back in soon enough, costing taxpayers more money to run the prisons they’re in. A fab quote comes from the BBC interviewing Mark Haddon on the subject: "Even prisoners in Guantanamo Bay can get given books as gifts"

It’s not a simple matter. And the points I’ve covered here don’t even scratch the surface of the issues facing libraries. But banning books being sent into prisons from the outside, to me, is just not helping. If you’re going to give an inmate any chance of improving their education level whilst serving time, and thus allowing them to come back to the public world with a better chance of finding employment and contributing to society (I hate that phrase) then allowing books to be sent into our prisons seems sensible. If I had £6.31 (minimum wage for anyone over 21), I’d rather pay someone for an hour to check thirty incoming packages of books from outside sources, than spend it on one book for the prison library that only one inmate at a time can have amongst his twelve books on his bookshelf.

I hope this makes sense. I have so many questions about prison libraries. But I wanted to write about this to begin to make sense of my thoughts and feelings on our prison libraries. Maybe one day I’ll get to experience them first hand.

I'll leave this with a link to a charity. The Shannon Trust aim to make every prisoner a reader. It sets up schemes that have reading prisoners teaching their fellow, illiterate inmates through a peer to peer reading scheme. They're active in almost every prison in the UK.

Over and out.