On January 27 lawmakers reintroduced the Prison Libraries Act, the first federal bill to establish and expand library services within state and territory correctional facilities. It’s a significant piece of legislation with a potentially outsized effect, and perhaps a missed opportunity at the heart of its mission.
If enacted, over the next six years H2825 would appropriate $60 million from the Department of Justice for a new grant program funding correctional library services. The version that sponsor Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) introduced in 2023 picked up 45 Democrat cosponsors and a lot of stakeholder support, but was never advanced out of committee.
“America’s correctional system is far too often focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. The Prison Libraries Act is an attempt to shift this dynamic,” Cleaver stated. “By making strategic investments in the rehabilitative components of America’s correctional facilities, we can reduce recidivism, strengthen public safety and curtail the growing costs of our correctional system.”
Public libraries in the free world are funded partly by government grants, but mostly through property taxes. Funds for state prison libraries, however, mostly come from corrections department (DOC) budgets, where they’re not the highest priority.
The American Library Association (ALA), which consulted on the legislation, has previously suggested that adequate annual funding for a prison library would be about $13 per capita. So based on some extremely informal calculations, we can say the Act might fund services at 500 facilities—about one-third of the state prisons in the country.
A wide range of library services would be eligible for the new grant funding, including digital literacy training; financial literacy training; job training; “modern” books and equipment; redesigning and decorating so the space is still security-compatible but “more welcoming”; peer-led programming; and hiring library staff. All services would be free, including printing and use of “computers (including laptops) and the internet within the library. “
Nowhere does anyone propose training incarcerated people to work as librarians.
In June 2025, the ALA published an in-depth report on the myriad benefits of investing in prison libraries. However much the state invests in prison education programs is estimated to save five times that amount in future incarceration costs—the programs reduce recidivism that dramatically.
The report makes repeated references to the importance of access to trained library staff, the inherent difficulty of retaining outside library staff in a correctional environment, and how “investing in prison library programming would reduce the economic impact of recidivism by enabling incarcerated individuals to begin the process of reintegrating into the workforce.”
The ALA also told Filter that it provided input on the Act “in consultation with prison library workers.” But nowhere in the report nor in the Act does anyone propose training incarcerated people to be librarians.
“The Prison Libraries Act is an important first step towards expanding library resources for incarcerated people in state prisons, especially to gain occupational skills that make it easier to find employment post release,” the ALA told Filter. “Among aspirational suggestions detailed [by ALA] is that career pathways through accredited institutions should be made available for incarcerated
Offering prisoners formal librarian training might be more practical than aspirational. The Act encourages use of grant funding to hire “qualified librarians and staff,” defined as those who have practical experience; the ability to catalog, archive and maintain electronic databases; and the ability to organize events. It also directs the US attorney general to prioritize applicants whose planned library services would provide vocational training, positively impact the prison population, and so forth. Prioritizing applicants who plan to train in-house librarians would seem to make sense for everyone.
Not every prison has a general library, but one way or another they probably all have a librarian.
Filter has previously reported on how prison library access changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and how, in the absence of library services provided by the state, prisoners have created their own.
“I get to talk to folks I wouldn’t normally talk to, about something I love. Which is books. I’ve always loved books,” Luther, incarcerated in a private prison in Tennessee, told Filter in 2024.
Luther runs a unsanctioned library out of a broom closet, for which his fellow prisoners pay him $5 a week from a mutual aid fund of their own money. He logs every book that’s checked out or returned, and writes short reviews on index cards to help people decide what to read next.
“[M]any so-called libraries are little more than a few dusty shelves, often not managed by trained library workers,” the ALA report states. “Thus, some prisons have libraries worthy of the name, but many others have only minimal or nonexistent services. This means that many incarcerated people have no real access to a meaningful library and the expertise of librarians.”
The intention here is obviously to say that prisoners deserve more library access than they currently have, but it seems remiss that incarcerated librarians aren’t at the center of the whole discussion. Not every prison has a general library, but one way or another probably every prison has a librarian.
Some are formally assigned to DOC library services, some are de facto librarians like Luther, some are jailhouse lawyers, some are in segregation 23 hours a day and selling poetry to the other book-starved guys on their tier, but in any community of incarcerated people someone will have made it their business to facilitate access to reading material. These would generally be people with an affinity for books; who have institutional knowledge that could help scale up library services at their respective facilities; and who are not subject to the same factors that keep outside librarians from coming in on a regular basis, such as the ability to be anywhere else.
