The United States imprisons more people in absolute numbers and per capita than any other country on earth.

With about 5 percent of the world population, the US hosts more than 20 percent of its incarcerated population, and the country's incarceration rate has roughly quintupled since the early 1970s.

About 2 million Americans currently live behind bars, and millions more are currently on parole or probation or have been in the recent past.

Studies have shown that literacy and educational programs help reduce recidivism, and while there is some focus on the need for basic education (we frequently receive requests from people seeking materials to help them prepare for a General Education Development (GED) test or "how to books" so one can develop employable skills), a number of studies emphasize the importance of developing social skills, artistic development, and emotional management.

Incarcerated individuals with access to books tend to read far more books than those who live outside prison bars, but as prison budgets are slashed, education services suffer, and some prisons don't have libraries at all. Others have facilities that are woefully inadequate and so organizations have sprung up to try to meet that need.

What We Do

Check out our 2025 Year-in-Review Newsletter!

We receive written requests from people in prison, match those requests to our inventory of donated books, pack the packages ourselves, and mail them directly. Each year, we send more than 6,000 book packages to people incarcerated in over 500 prisons in the United States.

But beyond answering letters and sending books, much more is involved - from picking up mail to dropping off packages and all of the steps that fall in between including calling prisons, processing letters, training new volunteers, working with groups, sorting and shelving books, printing postage, writing the newsletter, posting to Facebook and Twitter, curating categories of books to make sure that the books that we have align with the books prisoners want and need, and of course, raising the funds needed to keep us going.

Some of our volunteers support prison libraries directly. Others collect and send books for prison book clubs, and others yet have sent books in to prison waiting rooms.