Given the current intersection of illiteracy, criminal activity and high recidivism rates, we as a society should be doing everything we can to make books more easily available and encourage reading behind bars, but the barriers to learning to read in prison are more persistent than ever.
Access to reading materials and education is especially important because studies estimate that illiteracy rates in prison populations run as high as 75 percent. Literacy New York reports that nearly 85% of juveniles who face trial are functionally illiterate, “underscoring the relationship between illiteracy and crime.”
Access to books is becoming increasingly more difficult in U.S. prisons. Many state correctional systems are applying considerable restrictions to, or stopping altogether, a longstanding practice that allowed people in prison to receive packages of books from the outside. For decades, organizations like Books Through Bars have sent free books to prisons; thousands of packages of books are sent every year.
For example, French prisons are required to have libraries, but not librarians. Mediators are needed, however, to encourage reading, to help those who struggle with reading and writing and to organize literacy activities and cultural programs. These can be book clubs, creative writing workshops, and author readings.
There is also the benefit of bibliotherapy, as books help perform the work that would ideally be done by psychologists if the resources existed, says attorney and literacy activist Alexandre Duval-Stalla. “Criminals rarely put themselves in another person’s shoes. Books allow them to live the stories of other people, and that’s very important. Words give you perspective and the tools for reflection.” Duval-Stalla points out “We know what keeps people out of prison; a job, housing, a family. But also the capacity to express and understand yourself, and that requires words.”
You can read the essay, “The Barriers to Learning to Read in Prison” at the Filter Magazine website by Tony Vick, an incarcerated writer in Tennessee who has served three decades of a life sentence. Vick is the author of two books, Secrets From a Prison Cell (Cascade Books, 2018) and Locked In and Locked Out (Resource Publications, 2023). His writing has also been published at Solitary Watch, the Progressive, Truthout, Shado and in multiple books and anthologies, the most recent of which is Storms of the Inland Sea (Shanti Arts, 2022). His Filter story about CoreCivic medical care won “Best News” at the 2025 Stillwater Prison Journalism Awards.
