Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement.
Our work emanates from two interconnected premises: education is a basic human right, and engaging the community in educational justice efforts is a requisite component to building sustainable restorative justice models.
Since 2005, we have mailed over 30,000 books.
100 imprisoned people (75 women, 25 men) and 27 volunteers have participated in our book clubs.
Over 300 people have volunteered.
We’ve hosted 16+ wrapping parties for community volunteer groups.
But don’t just take it from us. Hear what our friends on the inside have to say about our work.
Book clubs are places of gathering and welcoming; analyzing and discussing; writing and dreaming. Attendees read new things, meet new people, and tackle new ideas. These clubs are iconic and mobile, and they can happen anywhere.
An overwhelming and exciting majority of the hundreds of letters we receive each week are directly from incarcerated people in Appalachia, but not all of our correspondence is from the people behind bars.
APBP is taking on our next big challenge: creating and supporting credit-bearing college courses for incarcerated students. And we need your help.
I have passed the first book I received on to two others so far, and plan to do so until the cover falls off! (The library here can fix it up when I donate it.)
Thank you for providing books directly to prisoners free of charge. Yours is a great service, especially for those whose library’s collection is meager, outdated, or otherwise inadequate and who simply do not have the funds to buy books out of their own pockets.
In many ways this [book club] and your time/effort have been an emotional and intellectual lifeline for me.
