What Is It Like To Be a Prison Librarian?

Here's an interesting article on books, prison libraries, and prisoners written by a library intern at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility in Napanoch, NY. Many facilities don't have libraries like the one described here.

The Great Escape

Much of what the library does is merely palliative, and colludes with the other parts of the prison to keep things quiet. But if they believed crowd control was their only function, librarians would flee from prisons. The library, and the librarian too, work a paradox. Help men by control, control men by help. It's something they don't teach in library school.