An Escape: Books through Bars provides inmates with the magic of stories

Providence Books through Bars is a 15-year-old organization that provides reading material to inmates throughout the country. It is a small operation in the South Side that helps to fuel big dreams. I recently spoke with Tara Emsley, president of Providence Books through Bars, about the organization.

Emily Olson: How does Books through Bars work?

Tara Emsley: We are one of about 30 different independent prison book programs in the country. Inmates find out about us through a resource guide in the prison or through word of mouth. They will write us a letter telling us about themselves and letting us know what they’re interested in. We read the letter and go through our library and see what we have that matches up best with their interests. Then we mail those books directly to those inmates. The requests we get are really interesting. We get a lot of fiction, but then you get a lot of non-fiction, learn a trade, learn to draw, learn a different language. We get history books and classics and philosophy. We get a really wide variety.

EO: Is there a general theme to the letters you receive?

EO: How often do you send a package of books to an inmate?

TE: We get more letters than we can answer, so we try to limit it to about once a year per inmate so we can get to as many people as possible.

EO: Do you work with inmates in Rhode Island?

TE: We don’t send books to inmates in RI. They have a mail policy that all books must be brand new and must come from a publisher. I think it’s a matter of trying to control what comes into the prison in terms of contraband, but we hope to work with them. We try to talk to them and tell them we’re not sending anything inappropriate, but want to serve our community, and are open to continuing the conversation with them.