Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library Blog: Blog

International Prisoners' Justice Day from a Library Perspective

Posted by Lindsay Kriebel on August 3rd, 2022

August 10th marks International Prisoners’ Justice Day. This day began as a protest against inhumane treatment of incarcerated people after the preventable death of Eddie Nalon in Millhaven Maximum Security Prison in 1974. To draw attention to issues around mass incarceration, the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library has set up a book display featuring a selection of our books on the subject.

Although this commemoration started in Canada, and issues of prison reform have been taken on across the globe, it feels especially significant in the United States, the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, by a factor of nearly five times the rate of comparable countries. Arizona’s rates are even higher than the U.S. average, at around 800 per 100,000. 

Critical issues surrounding prison reform include, increasing voting rights for the formerly incarcerated, combatting racial bias and discrimination, improving poor prison conditions, ending exploitation of labor, and policy reforms around high mandatory sentences and a focus on punishment over rehabilitation. 

Libraries and Prisons

One issue I would add to this from a library perspective is a serious lack of resources for the incarcerated. In my previous job, I answered letters from incarcerated individuals seeking legal forms and access to case records. What struck me again and again from these letters (aside from the absolutely impeccable handwriting of some) were repeated complaints about a lack of access to legal materials. Many incarcerated people – a term popularized by the New York Public Library’s prison and jail services that prioritizes person-first language – had access to very few legal books or supplies, and even fewer in print in their limited law libraries. In fact, the Pima County Jail only provides access to a tablet with LexisNexis installed on it, a resource with a high learning curve for the general public, and certainly for anyone without a legal background. 

From calling around to different jails and prisons, I found out that there’s a severe shortage of professional library staff in prison law libraries, with many libraries being staffed by corrections officers or even the incarcerated individuals themselves. So not only is there a lack of access to information, but a lack of guidance in finding this information. The only recourse for many was to write letters to their local law library and hope for a response. 

Added to this is a lack of monetary resources for incarcerated individuals. For context, the starting hourly rate in the Arizona Department of Corrections Rehabilitation and Re-entry’s Work Incentive Pay Program is .10 cents per hour. This severely limits access to any materials that are not free, as well as representation from an attorney. 

All these barriers to accessing legal information can be a huge obstacle to incarcerated people pursuing their own legal matters in prison, which could be anything from child custody cases to post-conviction relief petitions. 

Resources for libraries

So how can we help?

AALL’s Social Responsibility Special Interest Section compiles a list of resources for Assistance for Prisoners, including basic guides to legal research that can be sent to prisons on request, and a database of Law Libraries Serving Prisons that lists libraries who respond to letters from incarcerated people or provide other assistance. 

The New York Public Library is an excellent example in library correctional services, providing reference services by mail, sending mobile libraries to jails, and publishing their annual Connections Reentry Manual which can be requested for free. They will also provide a helpful toolkit to get started on answering requests by mail on request.  

There are also many organizations that accept book donations to prisons. Although the majority are focused on fiction and general reference materials, some will accept legal materials, like the Women’s Prison Book Project. A local organization in Tucson is Read Behind the Bars. 

If you’d like to read more on the subject, check out some of the books on display in our New Books section:

Dear Books to Prisoners by Bo-Won Keum (Editor, Designed by, Contribution by); Books To Prisoners (Prepared for Publication by); Dan Berger (Contribution by); Andy Chan (Contribution by); Michelle Dillon (Contribution by, Editor); Kimberly Wogahn (Editor); Kris Fulsaas (Editor)

ISBN: 9780939306152

Publication Date: 2019-07-25

Selected letters from Incarcerated Persons requesting books from Books to Prisoners, a Prison Book Program.

 

 

Incarceration Nations by Baz Dreisinger

ISBN: 9781590517277

Publication Date: 2016-02-09

Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, Incarceration Nations is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. Professor, journalist and founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline, Baz Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America's most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex.

Halfway Home by Reuben Jonathan Miller

ISBN: 9780316451512

Publication Date: 2021-02-02

A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. 

 

The Women's House of Detention by Hugh Ryan

ISBN: 9781645036661

Publication Date: 2022-05-10

This singular history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century. The Women's House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women's imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City's Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates--Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur--were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women's prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis and reconstructs the little-known lives of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition--and demonstrating that by queering the Village, the House of D helped defined queerness for the rest of America. From the lesbian communities forged through the Women's House of Detention to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and much more: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired.

 

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration by Franklin E. Zimring

ISBN: 9780197513170

Publication Date: 2020-10-01

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. While there is unanimous condemnation of the practice, there is no consensus on the causes nor any persuasive analysis of what is likely to happen inthe coming decades.In The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration, Franklin E. Zimring seeks a comprehensive understanding of when, how, and why the United States became the world leader in incarceration to further determine how the use of confinement can realistically be reduced. To do this, Zimring firstprofiles the growth of imprisonment after 1970, emphasizing the important roles of both the federal system and the distribution of power and fiscal responsibility among the levels of government in American states. He also examines the changes in law enforcement, prosecution and criminal sentencingthat ignited the 400% increase in rates of imprisonment in the single generation after 1975. Finally, Zimring then proposes a range of strategies that can reduce prison population and promote rational policies of criminal punishment.Arguing that the most powerful enemy to reducing excess incarceration is simply the mundane features of state and local government, such as elections of prosecutors and state support for prison budgets, this book challenges the convential ways we consider the issue of mass incarceration in theUnited States and how we can combat the rising numbers.

 

Please do not hesitate to send Jessica Ugstad, Collections Development Librarian, suggestions for additions to our collections, or contact Lindsay Kriebel, Library Services Associate, Acquisitions, with questions on the subject.

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As always, if you have any research related questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us! We are happy to help here at the law library. 

You have 24/7 access to the library via your CatCard. Email us for all research/reference questions, research appointment scheduling, and ALL QUESTIONS: reference@law-arizona.libanswers.com