BY Mike Templeton
The Central Appalachian region has a disproportionately high incarceration rate, and it is also an area with some of the highest concentrations of prisons. Economic conditions drive both of these facts, and education is known to be the pathway for most people toward a better life. In the Appalachian region, there is a program called the Appalachian Prison Book Project that simply gets books to incarcerated people in Appalachia, and this is one of the key stepping stones toward other educational programs that lead people away from prison. Given the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition’s past work in areas of community education, assisting people with GED programs for example, we applaud these efforts.
The Appalachian Prison Book Project began in 2004 after a number of people took a class at West Virginia University on the history and literature of imprisonment. English Professor Kay Ryan introduced area students to the idea of offering books to prisoners as a way of both making their lives just a little less grim and potentially helping them consider other educational programs that could alter the course of their lives for the better. For the next two years, students, faculty, and community members began collecting books and raising money to begin what would become a full-time program known as the Appalachian Prison Book Project. Prisoners can write to the APBP requesting books, and volunteers work to track down and find the books, and they send them off. The project has grown vastly since its founding and now includes for-credit college courses taught in area prisons.
It seems reasonable that the best way to reduce prison recidivism is to change the conditions that lead to the problem in the first place. For many people, crime is the inevitable symptom of a lack of meaningful opportunities. UACC has long held that education is the best pathway for Appalachians to improve their lives and increase economic opportunities. Studies have shown that prison education programs can reduce recidivism by nearly 15 percent. This is a significant part of the population, and it constitutes thousands of people who found their way out of the circle of prison and crime toward healthy and productive lives.
At the same time, the Appalachian region has become something like the epicenter of what has come to known as the carceral state, a form of government that relies primarily on incarceration over other means to address crime. The Appalachian region has witnessed a boom in the construction of for-profit prisons. As the coal industry waned, prisons fit well in clear cut and flattened mountains in areas where land is relatively inexpensive. Nevertheless, groups such as the Appalachian Prison Book Program have worked to help individual prisoners make their way out of this machine. These kinds of programs work on the day-to-day scale of individuals even as other efforts work on a grander scale.
Closer to home, in Appalachian Ohio the Athens Books to Prisons Program provides a similar service, sending books to prisoners upon their request. Like the APBP, the ABP takes requests from prisoners, and, with a volunteer staff, fills those requests and sends books to regional prisons to be distributed to inmates. The idea behind the Athens Books to Prisoners project can be found on their website: “We believe that books have the power to decrease the isolation and dehumanization of the prison system, and stimulate individual growth and positive change. Many of the requests we receive are from prisoners with little or no access to adequate prison libraries or educational programs.” This is a project that gives a leg-up to people toward educational opportunities that put them on the path to increased economic and social opportunities.
Multiple Ohio colleges and universities now operate prison education programs. There is an increasing awareness of the ways education and literacy interrupt the destructive social patterns that drive crime from its roots. Most often criminal behavior is the result of a perceived lack of opportunity. Education and literacy help redirect people toward economic and social change that is for the betterment of everyone. APBP now operates a program in which inmates can get college credit for the work they do with the program. Within the prison system itself, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction offers college credit courses and GED assistance for inmates. This too can be served with the work of programs Athens Books to Prisoners which help bring books into the prison system.
Educational programs form part of the foundation of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition. From the outset, at the Main Street Bible Center, tutoring and other assistance toward high school diplomas and success with the GED has been part of the primary work of advocating for urban Appalachians. The economic disadvantages that weighed on the earliest Appalachian migrants persist in the Appalachian region today as social and economic changes upset the ways people live and make a living. Program like the Appalachian Prison Books Project and Athens Books to Prisoners form part of the basis of new approaches to literacy and education for Appalachians. As always, it appears that the regular folks down here where we all live are the ones who have rolled up their sleeves to lend a helping hand. In this case, the helping hand comes in the form of a great book.
Full information on the Appalachian Prison Book Project can be found at this link: appalachianprisonbookproject.org.
More information on Athens Books to Prisoners can be found on their website: athensbookstoprisoners.weebly.com.
Michael Templeton is a writer, and independent scholar. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published with Erratum Press and Impossible to Believe, published by Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications and the awaiting of awaiting: a novella, with Nut Hole Publishing. Check out his profile in UACC’s Cultural Directory. He has published numerous articles and essays on contemporary culture and works of creative non-fiction as well as experimental works and poetry. He lives in West Milton, Ohio with his wife who is an artist.