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For over 50 years, a network of nonprofits has sent free books to people in jails and prisons across the country. But last year, several states, including Missouri, Arkansas and, most recently, Tennessee, barred these groups from sending books to prisoners. Char Daston from member station WPLN in Nashville reports fear of contraband is limiting access to books.
CHAR DASTON, BYLINE: The Appalachian Prison Book Project lives in an old stone house in Morgantown, West Virginia. It sends books to prisoners in six states.
LYDIA WELKER: We get about 200 letters a week from people incarcerated asking for books that they like to read.
DASTON: Lydia Welker is one of the lead volunteers.
WELKER: They might ask us for a certain author or a genre or a specific title that they want.
DASTON: Then a volunteer checks the supply of donated books and tries to send the best possible match. State prison systems control who can mail books to prisoners. They have a list of trusted book vendors, and until last April, Appalachian Prison Book Project was on Tennessee's list. Welker says that's when something unusual started happening.
WELKER: We got four tote bags' worth of books returned from state prisons in Tennessee that same day.
DASTON: It turned out the Tennessee Department of Correction, or TDOC, had taken all the books-to-prisons programs off its approved vendor list. Now a prisoner who wants a certain book has to get someone else to buy it from just a few authorized online booksellers. A spokesperson for TDOC said in a statement that the change was made to stop contraband from coming through the mail. But Moira Marquis, who wrote a study on prison censorship for PEN America, says research doesn't back that up.
MOIRA MARQUIS: We know from available evidence that it's - roughly 2% of all contraband that comes into facilities comes in through paper mail.
DASTON: That's all paper mail, not just books. But screening mail and books takes time and labor, and in Tennessee, many prisons are chronically understaffed. Kelly Brotzman directs the Prison Book Program in Massachusetts, which serves all 50 states. She says this change will shrink the number of prisoners who get new books.
KELLY BROTZMAN: Because you don't have the internet as an incarcerated person, you can't order them. Plus, you don't have any money.
DASTON: Prison libraries aren't usually a good option either. PEN America says they're often small and not frequently updated. Tennessee prisoners say they've noticed the change. Brian Hurst is serving a life sentence. He says he used to get books from a church and that reading in prison changed him. He wrote me, I found escape and, in that escape, a newfound purpose, a drive in life I did not before possess. That kind of personal growth - Tennesse native Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin says he saw it, too, when he was in federal prison in the 1970s. At the time, the only books allowed at all were bibles. He helped lead a lawsuit that ended that restriction. Then he started a reading group.
LORENZO KOM'BOA ERVIN: People who had been gangsters - it changed their focus entirely. Instead of the use of violence, it allowed people to understand that there was a new possibility.
DASTON: Tennessee corrections officials say programs can still send books by donating them to prison libraries, rather than mailing them directly to prisoners. But advocates say that's not a reliable way to get a prisoner their requested book.
For NPR News, I'm Char Daston in Nashville.
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