Books to Prisoners

Mission

Books to Prisoners (BTP) provides free books to individual prisoners across the United States. The organization's primary purposes are to aid and foster the literacy and self-education of all prisoners in the United States, to encourage volunteer participation in aiding prisoners' literacy and education, and to disseminate information to the general public about these efforts.

Description

BTP is a Seattle-based nonprofit organization that sends books to prisoners in the United States. According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the prison population has a substantially lower level of literacy that the general population.  BTP believes that books are tools for learning and opening minds to new ideas and possibilities. By sending books to prisoners, we hope to foster a love of reading, encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-improvement, and improve a prisoner's chance of successfully reintegrating into society upon release.

In 2023 BTP sent out over 11,700 individual packages of books, weighing a total of more than 15.5 tons. 

BTP also works to decrease restrictions placed by prisons and departments of correction on reading materials. Many states have been trying to make access to books more difficult, using genuine concerns over contraband as the rationale tor unnecessary blanket book bans. In 2019 BTP the WA Dept of Corrections surreptitiously banned books to WA prisoners. BTP coordinated a campaign to reverse the ban, garnering national media, tacit support from Governor Inslee, and a massive mobilization from thousands of people who just thought it was wrong to make access to books, literacy and education more difficult. The Seattle Times disproved the DoC's logic and the ban was reversed, but elsewhere across the US the struggle for access to books continues.

Recognition

BTP is a volunteer-driven organization with a single part-time employee and extremely low overheads. We do our very best to use as much of your donations on postage, wrapping paper and tape as possible.
Previous supporters of BTP have included: Noam Chomsky, REM, Grateful Dead, Alice Walker, Brandi Carlile, Chumbawamba.

BTP received a 'Light a Fire' award from Seattle Metropolitan Magazine in 2012, a Human Rights Award from the City of Seattle's Office of Civil Rights in 2015, and the Sherry Prowda Literary Champion Award from Seattle Arts and Lectures in 2020. 

BTP is nationally recognized as a leader in social justice and a frequent source for media highlighting inequities in the criminal justice system. In January 2022, BTP volunteers were solicited to write an opinion piece published in the Washington Post. In June 2022 BTP were invited to participate in the American Library Association conference in DC. In February 2023 were featured in a KUOW segment on volunteering. BTP volunteers' contributions were recognized in a book released by University of Georgia Press in March 2024: 'Books Through Bars: Stories From the Prison Books Movement'.