BIBLIOTECAS EM PRISÕES

Avi Steinberg, bibliotecário num estabelecimento penal em Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay escreveu um interessante artigo sobre o valor da biblioteca em prisões. Necessárias? Dispensáveis? Formadoras? 'Perigosas? Desse artigo, algumas transcrições abaixo. E em Portugal, como se pensam estas bibliotecas?

In the public debate about our penal system, prison libraries tend to be a point of controversy. Some critics worry that tax money is misspent on coddling convicted felons. Some go further, and stoke public fear that prison libraries are giving violent convicts access to materials that will incite them. The concept of books in prison has been contentious since at least the 19th century, when prison chronicler Enoch Cobb Wines wrote that some government officials considered prison libraries to be “of doubtful influence.” 

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The library is a shared public space, a hub, where people spend significant portions of their time, often daily. It is a place inmates work and, in some important ways, live. It is more purposeful and educational than a recreational yard, less formal than a classroom. The prison library gives inmates an organic way to connect to the world, to each other, to themselves as citizens. It’s a small democratic institution set deep within a prison, one they can choose to join.

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