After disruption, nonprofits will be able to send books to Tennessee prisoners again

Prisoners in Tennessee will soon be able to receive free books again. Last year, the Tennessee Department of Correction made it impossible for books-to-prisons nonprofits to mail books to prisoners in Tennessee. WPLN News reported on the issue in January.

Now, one books-to-prisons program says it’s worked out a system with the corrections department that will allow it to resume sending books.

Lydia Welker helps lead the West Virginia-based Appalachian Prison Book Project, which serves Tennessee and five other states in the region. She says, shortly after WPLN’s reporting, she heard from lots of people who were outraged and wanted to help.

“We had people reach out from all across the state of Tennessee and our region and the country,” she said.

Then, she got an email from a senior TDOC official, who expressed the same feeling.

“She had no idea about this policy change or inability to send books,” Welker said. “And as a reader herself, she was appalled.”

Sending books directly to prisoners is no longer allowed, so the corrections official offered a workaround: books-to-prisons programs will now send books to a designated staff member at each prison. TDOC says those staffers will be the assistant wardens for treatment. That staffer will then distribute books to the prisoners who asked for them.

“We’re going to start mailing to one state prison in the next couple of weeks as our first kind of trial run, see how that works out,” Welker said.

Another books-to-prisons nonprofit, the Massachusetts-based Prison Book Program, will also try sending books to Tennessee prisoners again using this new system.

Brian Hurst is incarcerated at Turney Industrial Complex. He says he appreciates the change, but is skeptical about why Tennessee prisons implemented a restriction on sending books in the first place. TDOC says it made the change to prevent contraband from entering prisons through the mail.

“It begs the question, why is the (staff member who will receive the books) more adept than the trained mailroom personnel at catching incoming contraband?” Hurst wrote to WPLN News.

Data from another state prison system, in Florida, showed that only around 1.7% of prison contraband arrived by mail. Reporting from The Marshall Project and the Texas Tribune found the largest share of contraband in Texas prisons was brought in by guards.

Hurst also wonders if prisoners will know they can access books again.

He wrote, “I think the workaround will have little to no effect on the majority of incarcerated readers unless TDOC posts notices informing them of the change—statewide.”

For now, Appalachian Prison Book Program will work through a backlog of requests from the past several months it’s been unable to fulfill.