'Behind the wire': What it's like to work in a prison library

Wednesday, 28 September 2022

Going “behind the wire” for work every day may seem intimidating, with prison security checks and searchlight towers, but for Ariana Blowers, “it feels so normal”.

At first sight, the prison librarians’ morning routine looks unnerving.

They snap on their security gear, scan their belongings for threats, and undergo checks for contraband.

But, once inside the library at Mt Eden Corrections Facility, Blowers describes her day-to-day as “incredible.”

Blowers works closely with fellow librarian Zoe Cornelius – together, they became used to the unique challenges of the role.

For safety reasons, two librarians deliver books to the prisoners at Mt Eden jail, rather than having the inmates spend time between the shelves.

“We talk to each other a lot – if something upsets us we discuss it,” says Cornelius. “We don’t take it home. We address it in the moment.”

“I’ve spoken to people and thought, that could have been me, if I had started life in the same way, I could have easily been in this position.”

Cornelius studied a Masters in Criminology before becoming a librarian which she says gives her “a better understanding”.

“It’s not just that people are bad,” Cornelius explains. “It’s that people do bad things, and make bad choices. I had more empathy coming in because that was my viewpoint.”

How can a library change a life?

Neil Beales, Chief Custodial Officer at the Department of Corrections, says the library can be “life-changing” for prisoners, teaching them new skills – like how to become an expert portrait artist.

“I had one violent prisoner in Paremoremo who came across a book teaching people how to paint. He started practising painting portraits in his cell and he was exceptionally talented. It was so lifelike, you couldn’t differentiate it from a photograph.

“That completely changed his whole demeanour. All of a sudden the violence went out of him, the aggression just left him, because he was able to channel it into this artwork – which he knew how to do from picking a book up in the library.”

The library services are so wide-ranging that they cannot easily be “quantified”, according to Beales, but that is what makes them so important.

“You can’t really measure it, you can’t quantify it, it’s not the sort of thing you can tick in a box, but it’s really, really valuable.”

Prisoners are “severely limited” in terms of their literacy, but the library services open them up to opportunities they have not had before – like reading to their kids.

“There are prisons in New Zealand where we used to do audiobooks: so a father in prison could read a story and put it onto an audiobook, and it would be sent out to their children they could have their father read them a story at night.

“And a lot of them never had that for themselves as children. But want to be able to do something for their kids.”

While prisoners can make requests for books, censorship is an issue in prisons, with material varying slightly from your local community library.

“There are books we have to be very, very careful about. We don’t want to retraumatise them, but nor do we want to be seen to be supporting an offence-led lifestyle,” says Beales.

Recording audiobooks, scoring A-levels, and checking out loads of Dan Brown

In Northland prison, the prisoners enter in groups of 10, always escorted by a custodial officer.

The libraries provide a break from the monotony for prisoners: but safety of the prison librarians is still paramount.

“Like other employees here, I wear a personal duress, which I can activate if there were to be any problems in the library space,” says Sherri McNabb, Librarian at Northland Regional Corrections Facility.

McNabb says the prison library service shapes “the men and women’s jail time.”

“They often say that they don’t know what they would do if they couldn’t have books to read,” McNabb says.

“They frequently say how much they enjoy coming here and that they appreciate the work I do. This is what makes the job so rewarding.”

As well as providing the next Dan Brown or Harry Potter instalment, improving numeracy and literacy is central to the role.

When we think about prisoners reading, images of the travelling book trolley from The Shawshank Redemption or Orange is the New Black come to mind, but, according to Mt Eden prison librarians​“it’s a bit more refined than that!”

“Any time that we pick up that literacy might be a problem, we try and get them assessed, and then they can get the support they need if their literacy is really low. There are a lot of them – it’s starting their education,’ Cornelius says.

As for requests, they are as varied as the prisoners themselves – in Auckland, there are a lot of requests for Nelson Mandela’s biographies, self-help books, and Dan Brown.

The librarians see prisoners taking on new enthusiasm for reading and writing.

“They want to level up,” says Cornelius. “It’s a habit that will hopefully take them beyond these walls.”

It’s this levelling up that keeps prisoners coming back to use the library services.

Beales says the role of prison libraries is changing all the time.

“Before, it was just a place for someone to borrow a book. Now, they’re places that provide educational resources.”

Being able to access Scrabble, dictionaries, chess, self-help books, psychology books, and law textbooks shows prisoners, according to Beales, “there is a different world out there.”

“(It’s) a connection to the outside world, that is a little more real than other parts of the prison.”