The works of George Orwell, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood have found a new home inside two Ohio prisons.
The Ohio Women’s Reformatory and Southeastern Correctional Institution are bringing in hundreds of new books. Combined, the prisons have 20 so-called Freedom Libraries – each of which offers more than 500 book titles, from the “Count of Monte Cristo” to” the “Lord of the Rings”.
“Books represent hope, possibility, the existence of miracles,” said Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet and founder of the national non-profit Freedom Reads.
The correctional centers will also offer their resident readers a chance to determine the next winner of a one-of-a-kind literary prize, entirely judged by incarcerated individuals. 25 Ohioans are a part of a national jury determining which new book wins the ‘2025 Inside Literary Prize’.
Betts said it’s a chance to have their voices – and their valuable literary criticisms – heard.
“When you’re in prison, you feel like your whole life is reduced to begging for freedom,” he said. “But that's not what people's lives are. And so this becomes an opportunity for people to show the other capaciousness that they're holding inside their bodies. Part of that is just trying to enjoy a good conversation about a good book and to say what matters to them.”
The power of literature
Betts knows from personal experience that books can serve as a bridge to the outside world. He was sentenced to prison at the age of 16. During his nearly nine year sentence, he said books altered his outlook on life and on himself.
“I became who I am because of books,” he said. “I learned how to build relationships with people, because of our mutual affinity for literature. I learned what it meant to discover a world that I was not a part of, the larger world of ambition, possibility, travel.”
He wants that same opportunity for incarcerated readers everywhere. While many prisons have libraries, Betts said some don’t have capacity for all the prisons’ residents or their hours are limited, making it difficult to check out books.
That’s why Betts places Freedom Libraries directly in prison housing units.
“By putting the Freedom Library on a cell block, we guarantee people have access, constant access, and it becomes a point for community, for hope,” Betts said.
Books in Ohio prisons
There’s limitations on what books are allowed in Ohio prisons. Books being mailed into the facilities are screened by employees to determine whether their content is appropriate for institutions’ residents.
Since 2018, some Ohio institutions have stopped allowing used books to be mailed to inmates in an effort to reduce contraband. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections has said it will make exceptions for non-profits donating books, according to reporting by the Marshall Project.
Betts is thankful for his partnership with the ODRC and hopes the additional libraries can be a solution everyone can get behind.
“Whether or not we all agree with the policy decisions that limited the access of things that get mailed into prisons, we know that that limited people's access to books,” he said. “And the Department of [Rehabilitation and] Corrections has worked closely with us to allow us to be an intervention.”
The Freedom Libraries offer everything from poetry to science fiction. Regardless of what genre, Betts said each shelf offers a kind of escape.
“Books became how I understood myself to be more than a crime that I committed … Books also became my refuge. I would not have survived without books.”
