Books Through Bars

Our Mission

At the end of 2005, there were more than 2.2 million US residents in prison or jail; 68% of state prisoners did not obtain a high school diploma (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Numerous studies assert the usefulness of providing educational programs to inmates, showing that the more education a person receives while incarcerated, the less likely they are to return to prison. In spite of these findings, many prisoners lack access to adequate educational programs and libraries. (Learn more at http://www.booksthroughbars.org/resources/learn).Books Through Bars facilitates prisoner self-education by providing quality books to dozens of prison libraries and hundreds of individual prisoners (many of whom lack library access) each year. Our unique service opportunity, in which volunteers read book-request letters from individual prisoners and choose appropriate reading materials for them, asks our volunteers to think critically about issues of racism, poverty, and educational access and their relationship to the criminal justice system