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Prison | Guy L. Pace
This is not a current cell in the Montana State Prison. This image is from the old prison.

Imagine, if you will, spending every day, every week, every month for years in a cell ten feet by six feet. You have a limited view of anything remotely resembling the outside. Your only contact with fresh air is the small time you spend in the exercise yard each day.

You might share this cell with another person. Your accommodations would be the metal frame bunk beds, a sink, a toilet, and a small desk with a cupboard. No privacy. One wall is just bars and a barred door.

My last post was about the Old Montana State Prison and my grandfather. Since then, I contacted the Montana State Prison and the prison librarian. I’d offered to donate a copy or two of my books to their library. She was very open and happy to get some new books. But, could I send four copies of each, please? See, the prison has four libraries in the different parts or security levels of the prison. I’m glad to do it.

Prisons Need Books

Montana State Prison needs lots of books, Wendy said, and they especially need dictionaries. The libraries Wendy oversees even have a Christian section and they could use more good fiction in that area. If you have new, or good used, books you can donate, please send some to:

Montana State Prisons Libraries
400 Conley Lake Road
Deer Lodge, MT 59722

Attn: Wendy Zunes

If you can, send four copies of each work. That helps.

I wasn’t certain how to get books to prisoners until a friend linked an article here. Granted the article is a few years old, but the information seems current. The article is a good guide to what to, and what not to donate. The Books Behind Bars organization often just wants cash to help fund the requests by prisons. Those books (usually used) get funneled through a couple of bookstores (one in Seattle, I understand).

But, sometimes, you can contact a prison directly and get books to them, as I did with Montana State Prison. With any prison, there are protocols to getting anything from the outside to them. I figured I could afford to donate a few copies of new books to the prison. I may contact a facility here in the Spokane area, too.

If you contact a local prison directly and have some success, you might post a comment here with an address like I did above. As mentioned in the linked article, prisons are for punishment. But they can also be places for second chances.

Keep writing.

(Note: Wendy said one of the most popular SF authors is Harry Turtledove and his alternate history books.)