The Appalachian Prison Book Project, a Morgantown nonprofit group that gives free reading materials to inmates, is in search of donations as the vacation season arrives.
Composition notebooks are in high demand.
“Once you concentrate on how little access there may be behind bars to things like paper, office supplies and notebooks where you may keep collections of drawings, paintings and creativity,” said Lydia Welker, digital communications coordinator with the Project, “well, the necessity is sensible.”
Earlier this month, the group took to social media for the primary time to ask for composition notebook donations.
“I used to be so thrilled by the response to this,” Welker said. “It’s so indicative of how our society, the communities inside Appalachia and in addition this country at large can care about people who find themselves inside (the prison system).”
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Notebooks donated to the Book Project should be paper-bound. Metal spirals should not permitted.
Also in demand are language, legal and medical dictionaries; thesauri; world almanacs; educational books; and foreign language learning materials. Books should be paperback and in good condition.
The books may also help inmates learn recent skills, broaden their worldviews and acquire college credits through the West Virginia University Higher Education in Prison Initiative.
Some prisons within the Book Project’s service area — including West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Maryland — have hosted book clubs. Now that pandemic regulations have eased, Welker said, the group hopes to begin those again.
“You get to listen to how much they benefit from the books they’re reading, they usually get to dissect and explore the books with people around them,” Welker said.
The organization receives about 200 letters per week with requests for reading materials. Each Saturday, on its Facebook page, the Book Project shares requests from people inside for those on the “outside” to fill.
Requests recently ranged from an HVAC and Mini Cooper repair manuals, books on crochet patterns and yoga guides to novels, books on Wicca and “The Big Book of UFO Facts, Figures & Truth.”
“We’re not nearly giving access to books. We wish to provide access to books that individuals need to read,” Welker said.
Welker said this system helps bridge people inside with the world outside.
“Imprisonment — it’s intended to silo, to maintain people within the system separate from those outside of it, yet there are more connections between the within and out of doors then many may imagine,” Welker said. “Keeping access and connections to people in the skin world is vital, it’s needed.”
Books regularly are shared inside. Dictionaries and reference materials — specifically legal dictionaries — have helped people appeal sentences and get charges dropped.
“How do you write a letter to a lawyer, a judge or put together a clemency report if don’t have a dictionary?” Welker said. “These are things that we have now access to day by day and take as a right that people who find themselves in jail don’t have.”
To learn more concerning the Appalachian Prison Book Project, visit https://appalachianprisonbookproject.org/.
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