Pittsburgh Prison Book Project

The Pittsburgh Prison Book Project (PBPP) is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States, that sends reading and educational materials to prisons in Pennsylvania.

History

The organization was originally founded as Book 'Em in 2000 by Etta Cetera and Athena Kazuhiro when they learned about the lack of literary material in prisons from an incarcerated friend. When they looked into the problem their friend was having in accessing materials they found that it was common in prisons across the United States and they endeavored to fix this educational deprivation. Their website states that their mission is to “improve the quality of life for incarcerated people in PA by providing free access to educational materials, books, and resources.” Prison budgets rarely invest their limited resources into their libraries, leaving them understocked. Thus, many prisoners are reliant on organizations such as PPBP for access to literature and educational access.

Upon first starting the organization, they received counsel from a well-established books-to-prisoners program in Philadelphia, Books Through Bars.  They also were sponsored by the local bookstore, The Three Penny, which helped them begin their program. They received lots of community interest and as they began to grow, they switched to a larger store, the Big Idea Book Store, in 2002. In 2003, they began under the Thomas Merton Center, which supports peace and justice programs with progressive, community-based projects. Then, in 2021 they moved under the Spartan Community Center of Hazelwood and changed their name to their current one of PPBP.  Today, their website states that they serve “approximately 200 prisoners across 35 state and federal prisons” and “mail an average of 500 pieces of reading material” each month. Since their start, around 40,000 individuals in PA have been served.

Book donations

On the Pittsburgh Prison Book Project website, they have information about what books can and cannot be donated. They state that donations shouldn't include books with spiral binding, books with extensive notes written in them, books that are musty or stained, or encyclopedias as prisons won't accept these books. Further, they are not in need of Christian books or the bible as these are readily available at most prisons through the prison pastors.  The website also includes a list of books that are in high demand.  Legal dictionaries are always in demand. These books are important to incarcerated people and can help them start the litigation process for appeals.  Trade and how-to books are also popular because they can help prisoners learn useful skills that can translate into jobs in the outside world.  For similar reasons, business and real-estate books are also popular.  Non-Judeo/Christian religious books are also in need as Christian books are readily available but information regarding other religions can be hard for incarcerated people to find.  History books are also popular, especially African-American history, African history, and Native-American history.  They also state that novels with African-American protagonists are in high demand as a large proportion of the prison population is African-American.

Book ban history

The reason these books are often in need is in part due to the book ban. Books to Prisoners, a prison book program founded in 1973, is outspoken about the effects of this ban. The amount of books banned in prisons varies from state to state, but across the United States, over 54,000 books are banned from prisons. While looking into prison book bans, a formerly incarcerated person noticed, “prison systems where lots of books are banned are not generally safer or less chaotic than those that don’t ban many titles”. He hypothesized that this was because many of the justifications for banned books were absurd.  Books banned include Dungeons & Dragons for being a security ‘threat’, yoga and anatomy books for being ‘explicit’, and black journalist Ida B. Wells' book, On Lynchings, for using ‘racial slurs’.

The Books to Prisoners Twitter account shared their frustrations with the prison book bans in a 2022 tweet reading, “Here's a book rejection that we just received from a prison in Tennessee: ‘Malcolm X not allowed.’ This is part of an insidious pattern of targeted bans by prisons against Black authors and against literature critiquing the prison system and power structures in this country”. Following this post, they also linked an interview discussing the legacy of the book ban. This article discusses how books such as Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf, and The Turner Diaries, “one of the most racist, horrible kinds of books you could pick up that leads to a lot of violence against people of color” are not banned. Thus, the banning of books seems to not be for the security and safety purposes that prisons purport is it.

Impact on prison policy

On September 5, 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) announced new restrictions on the ways that inmates can interact with the outside world.  Previously, inmates could receive books or publications from approved organizations (subject to inspection and approval from correctional officers).  The new restrictions however banned these direct donations under the explanation that they were switching over to ebooks to fight the flow of drugs into prisons.  These changes came in the aftermath of an outbreak of illness among corrections officers thought to be the result of synthetic cannabinoids.  A statewide lockdown of correctional facilities throughout Pennsylvania lasted from August 29 through September 10 of 2018 and resulted in 50 staff members and 33 prisoners being hospitalized that the DOC stated was due to exposure to synthetic drugs.  However, the Philadelphia Inquirer upon consulting toxicology experts posit that the illnesses were the result of a contagious hysteria as opposed to drug exposure.  

This inspired backlash from the community and books-to-prisoners organizations, including Pittsburgh Prison Book Project.  A member of PPBP stated that these policies would damage organizations such as PPBP and their ability to provide inmates with individualized materials and materials that they can carry on them at all times, such as dictionaries.  The policies would also work to sever inmates’ ties to the outside world through the books-to-prisoners organizations.  Further, the ebooks provided to the prisoners would be limited and not include access to in-demand books such as dictionaries and legal books.  It would also cost inmates financially as they would have to not only buy tablets to read the ebooks on but also buy ebooks that aren't in the prison library.  PPBP stated in the aftermath that they planned to take legal action against the DOC because they had not provided evidence that packages from book donation organizations had been linked to drugs.  They also organized letter-writing campaigns and phone blasts to Governor Wolf's office and the DOC secretary's desk.  They started petitions, spread the word on social media, and reached out to local politicians such as John Fetterman for support.  Members of the PPBP also wrote letters to local media outlets and wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post.  After seeing the backlash, the DOC took direct feedback on the policies from PPBP along with other organizations such as Books Through Bars which resulted in positive changes.  Their negotiations resulted in the DOC allowing book donation groups to communicate with inmates and sent books to them again with the caveat that all books would be searched for drugs before being given to the prisoners.

See also

• Books Through Bars
• Books to Prisoners
• Chicago Books to Women in Prison

External links

• Official website

This article "Pittsburgh Prison Book Project" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Pittsburgh Prison Book Project. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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