The small but occasionally heated literature on prison libraries greatly depreciates nineteenth-century prison libraries. In 1931, Austin MacCormick published an influential work on educating prisoners.^ MacCormick then went on to help found the Correctional Education Association and the Journal of Correctional Education. In a presentation to the American Correctional Association in 1970, he stated:

It does not seem to me necessary to devote much time to the subject of libraries in 19^th century prisons. … If a humane chaplain had a few books to pass out, they were usually printed in fine type and on dull and dreary subjects. … It may be presumptuous to write off a half-century or more of prison library history, but it does not seem realistic to me to believe that there were more than a very few collections of books deserving to be called prison libraries until the 1870’s, and very few more during the rest of the 19^th century.^

In her 1995 book on prison librarianship, a leading prison librarian documented mis-imagination and quoted MacCormick:

It is not difficult to imagine the reading fare in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century prisons, remembering that these were times when society had not yet fully recovered from being God-centered. … According to MacCormick, “Before any other agencies of rehabilitation, except religion, secured the sanction of the old punitive penology, books came into prisons. Even in the dungeon-like cells of the early 19^th century, where silence waged continual war on sanity, prisoners were permitted to read. Their reading, to be sure, was restricted to the Bible and other religious books, but they could read.” ^ ^

Another leading scholar of prison libraries has declared:

Throughout the nineteenth century most prisons had collections consisting primarily of spiritual literature, temperance tracts, and other books the convicts rarely read or wanted to read.^ ^ ^

A scholar suggested that a view in 1882 of a prison cell containing a book by Dante and one by Shelly was “a freak development in the hiatus between reform movements.”^ ^ That freak development was largely a scholarly construction. In truth, nineteenth-century U.S. prisons libraries had diverse holdings, including recent best-sellers and publicly controversial titles. About 1880, religious books made up only about 15% of prison libraries’ book holdings.

Scholars have argued vociferously about the relative merits of a public-library model versus a change-based model for prison libraries. The public library model is centered on the right to read:

regardless of the institution’s philosophy, the primary reason for a library is simple: inmates have an undeniable right to read.^

Inmate’s right to read can be interpreted as part of a conspiracy of cultural change and control:

Prison libraries and reading programs are instruments of cultural hegemony, designed to instill a desire to emulate certain behavior and morality. In short, education and reading are molders of character, but only through prescription, control, and compliance.^

A pragmatic change-based model of prison libraries emphasizes the state’s interest in reforming prisoners:

the state’s interest, reflected in the goals of correctional institutions, should therefore determine the nature and purpose of library services to prisoners.^

A right to read does not put reading material into persons’ hands, or provide much guidance about what and how much, at what cost, by whom, to whom, and in accordance with what procedure reading material and reading should occur. At the same time, the operation of correctional institutions isn’t reasonably understood as a unified, veiled conspiracy of cultural hegemony. The operation of incarceration facilities also doesn’t seem to reflect coherent, rational, humane public goals for changing offenders. What a prison librarian should do is far from clear.

For prison libraries, and for the justice system more generally, the fundamental democratic hope is that reasoned discussion and respect for human rights and dignity are the right course. Debate over the public-library model versus the change-based model has been dishearteningly violent:

The arguments he {Coyle} invokes do such violence to accepted canons of library service that examining them may shed light on the broadest goals of librarianship. … A large corps of frontline seasoned practitioners of prison librarianship disagree so vehemently with the tenets of this book that a formal published critique is essential. … Coyle’s “change-based” program goals chillingly echo those of Hans Löwe, whose 1938 “The Purpose of a Prison Library” outlined these aims…. Löwe cites several key works to achieve these goals: Mein Kampf, Gritzbach’s life of Hermann Göring, and Volke ohne Raum (A People without a Livingspace).^

A proponent of the change-based model seems to opposes prison libraries having as a purpose, or perhaps as a primary or only purpose, enjoyment and release from reading library books:

Enjoyment and release? Bullshit! This is what I meant when I said earlier that prison libraries had lost their way. Providing inmates with palliatives should not, cannot be our purpose.^

That declaration might charitably be interpreted as an emphatic statement to highlight a rhetorical dichotomy. However, it generated a scholarly call for punishment:

To suggest a movement away from the public library model, in which patrons choose for themselves what to read, view, think, and be, toward a philosophy of enforced use of collections materials based on the librarian’s own biases (even at the materials selection stage, this is still censorship) is a case of bigotry and discrimination that really should be challenged in court by ethically inspired correctional librarians or residents of correctional facilities. To my way of thinking, this is also a case for Judith Krug and the Office for Intellectual Freedom.^

That’s a sad scholarly development. Late-twentieth-century scholarship has highly valued obsession with relations of discursive power:

Between book and reader, in every sphere, stand relations of power, governing the process by which texts become available and interpretations are made.^

Dismantling the construction of mass incarceration requires more scholarly activity committed to truth and freedom.

In the U.S., state prison libraries developed in the nineteenth century more quickly than did public libraries. In 1875, prison libraries held 3.0 books per prisoner, compared to public libraries’ holdings of 0.5 library books per adult in the U.S. as a whole. Nineteenth-century prison libraries had diverse book holdings, including recent best-sellers and controversial titles.

Recommended holding of books per person were higher for prison libraries than for public libraries. In the 1930s, committees within the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Prison Association (APA) established standards for libraries. For public libraries in places with populations less than 10000, the ALA standard for book collections was three volumes per capita.^ The ALA-APA standard for prison libraries was ten books per inmate.^ ^ In 1962, the ALA and the American Correctional Association (ACA) adopted new objectives and standards for libraries in correctional institutions:

A collection within an institution should never be less than 6,000 well-selected volumes with at least 10 books per inmate. Institutions which have large groups of long-term prisoners should provide a minimum of 15-20 volumes per inmate.

The objectives and standards distinguished very small correctional institutions:

An exception may be made for a very small institution such as a camp or prison farm. Here there should be a small reference collection, supplemented by frequently changed books from a bookmobile, public library, or the State Library.^

These standards were incorporated into the ACA’s Manual of Correctional Standards in 1966.^ Both library and correctional professionals recognized the importance of books for prisoners.

Prison libraries continued to lead public libraries throughout the twentieth century in holdings per adult served. Public libraries in 1977 covered in their service territories about 87% of the U.S. population. Public libraries held 2.3 books per adult in their service territories. Prison libraries, in comparison, held 10.2 books per prisoner. U.S. prison libraries in 1977 thus held more than four times as many books per person served than did public libraries.

Prison libraries have held more than books. In the 1977 figures of books per adult, books comprised bound volumes, including bound volumes of periodicals. Some prison libraries also contained unbound current periodicals. A survey of state prison libraries in 1970 found 82 state prison libraries in 29 states held audio-visual materials and had audiovisual equipment.^ Some prison libraries responding to a survey in 1977 reported thousands of audiovisual titles.

Recent prison library recommendations underscore the importance of books to prisoners. In 1992, the ALA standard for prison libraries became “no less than five thousand (5000) titles, selected according to policy, or fifteen (15) titles per inmate, up to 2,500 inmates, whichever is greater.”^ The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions currently offers as a general guideline a minimum “2000 titles or ten (10) titles per inmate, whichever is greater.”^

Librarians have made extraordinary efforts to serve inmates. In 1971, Betty Barlow was a paraprofessional library staff member at the Lawrence Public Library in Kansas. On her own time, she personally initiated library service to the jail in Lawrence. Evidently both the jail staff and inmates appreciated Ms. Barlow’s efforts. In 1977, a new jail was built with facilities for a library. About 1979, Ms. Barlow reported, “We have over 1,000 volumes in the jail library and a back-up of about 5,000 paperbacks at the main library.”^

The extraordinary rise in incarceration in the U.S. since 1980 has reduced the quality of prison library service. By 2004, public library books per adult service had risen to 2.6 books per person. Prison libraries held about 7 books per prisoner in the year 2000, down from 10.2 in 1977. Prison library book acquisitions have not kept up with the rapidly growing prison population. But that’s not a good focus for policy concern. Mass incarceration is a much more serious problem than the shortfall in prison library books. The rise of mass incarceration underscores the importance of making prisoners relevant in public understanding and public action.

The decline of printed matter and the rise of digital works create fundamental challenges for prison libraries. Public libraries are exploring new, non-print media for providing public access to public information and public narratives. Prisoners, who retain their public citizenship, need access to public information and public narratives to make their public citizenship meaningful. That need goes beyond information legally required to uphold inmates’ constitutional right to lawful access to courts. Consistent with public safety, continuing prisoner access to public information and public narratives requires innovation in prison library services.