“Thank you for the years that you have provided me with books [and] for working so hard to reach us prisoners with an alternative solution—education—to help make our futures more promising.”
Learning Behind Bars
Each month, Books Through Bars receives about 500 letters from incarcerated people asking for books. The majority include requests for educational materials. Many incarcerated people want books about Black, Native American, and Latinx history. Nearly 25% ask for dictionaries. People also ask for books on improving reading, math, and writing skills; using computers; starting a business; and learning skilled trades like carpentry. Many need books that will help them get their GED.
These patterns reveal a larger truth about mass incarceration in the U.S.: many incarcerated people are poor People of Color denied access to quality educational and employment opportunities.
The letters also reveal the diversity of interests and skills present within the imprisoned population. New volunteers are sometimes surprised to read requests for advanced calculus, classic literature, physiology, or philosophy. Many volunteers are struck by the similarity of their interests to those of the incarcerated person whose book request they are filling.
Yet while the letters help us understand the ways in which incarceration disproportionately affects poor communities of color and dispel stereotypes of incarcerated people, they are also a testament to the eagerness of many incarcerated people to spend their time behind bars constructively.
A desire to learn, thwarted
Hundreds of incarcerated people have sent us detailed descriptions of the educational opportunities at their facilities. Below is just a small selection of the issues they face when trying to access resources and make positive changes in their lives.
Libraries
Many note the poor quality (or complete lack) of libraries at their facilities. In prisons where libraries do exist, multiple barriers keep people from using them: structural damage, conflicting work schedules, decreasing budgets, limited hours, and waitlists. Libraries are also often small, out-of-date, and mostly comprised of mass-market fiction instead of educational books.
Educational Programs
Others tell us about limited access to or a complete lack of educational programs, including GED prep and vocational training. Frequently, their states’ budgets for educational programming have decreased and courses have been eliminated—even though education has been shown to reduce recidivism among incarcerated people.
Adult Basic Education and GED Programs
Incarcerated people sometimes report that GED (high school equivalency) programs have been eliminated at their prison. However, they more commonly describe significant barriers to enrolling in such programs. Some are barred because they are in solitary confinement. Others face restrictive enrollment criteria. (For example, those who will be released soon are given priority over those with longer sentences.) Even where this is not the case, the waiting list may be literally years-long—we’ve heard from someone that their anticipated time on the GED waitlist is 5 ½ years!
College Classes
Through the mid-1990s, incarcerated people were eligible for higher education financial aid through federal Pell Grants. But in 1994, due to political pressure, Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated people was repealed. As a result, all but 8 of the 772 higher education programs available to incarcerated people were shut down. People who are incarcerated have since lost almost all access to college programming. In 2020, incarcerated people once again became eligible for Pell Grants, but the reduction in programs has had lasting effects; in the 2020–2021 academic year, there were only 38 bachelor’s degree-granting programs available to incarcerated people in the U.S.
There are still small numbers of incarcerated people who are able to participate in college courses. Special free programs, like Temple University’s Inside Out project and the Bard Prison Initiative, are offered at a small number of prisons to a select few incarcerated people. However, for most people facing incarceration, the only option is distance education, which requires the economic means to pay for such courses.
Restricted access
We receive many letters from incarcerated people housed in solitary confinement. They cannot access libraries or educational programming of any kind. They are completely cut off.