 Hi and welcome to a kind of training and overview of public library services to incarcerated people. This training is part of a series that will be produced out of San Francisco Public Library. Thanks to our Mellon Foundation funded expanding information access for incarcerated people project. We hope to release a new training every month or so, and are very excited to hear your feedback in the comments for this video. We're going to open today by hearing from a person who has been impacted by incarceration, and then we'll hear about four different projects taking place at public libraries across the country that are focused on library services for incarcerated people. And with that, I will turn it to our first speaker. Hello, my name is Zaire Nasirah. I work at TGI JP. I'm a reentry case manager. I wanted to talk about, I was, I was incarcerated for 30 years, and I want to talk about my, my passion and where I'm at a strong advocate for books as to before I was not. Honestly, I was not, but books saved my life but I'm going to start with like a book. I used to hear what is a book a book read a book, a book could take you anywhere it could take you. Anywhere you can learn anything you get educated by books. But when I was in school I didn't really value books I was an athlete who really didn't care about books and all that. And then I became incarcerated. And then, as I was becoming as I became incarcerated, I still really didn't care about books, only wanted a book is when we call going to the whole asset, you don't have anything to do but reach out for a book. So I will put in for a book. What I did notice why I was asking for a book is that the library services at that time, or still could be it was repetitious is like mark a genre, and that's the book that you would get. And they was the same books coming over and over the books was old use they were damaged. And I just read as much as I could. And then that was that. It wasn't until I got into. I started reading more when I was becoming certified to be a counselor. I was reading because I had to. But it wasn't I had paroled after 29 years of doing a life sentence, and I went back on a violation and in that violation I became back to when I on that violation. And the darkest moment of my life, like, it hurts my heart like when the door closed, I felt like I didn't want to live anymore. And that's just honestly how I felt. And the doors open, and I picked up a book. And the book was like, forgot the title of the book but it's like, you're more than like your worst day, and I read that book, and I read it twice, and then I hope the doors were open, and I will go get another book. I thought I read that one, I will go back down the stairs, and I was like whoever thought me would get like seven books, and I had them stacked in the room. And I just read and read and read, and those books just, it took me away, but it also took me away to a place where I started to rediscover myself started to self love myself. And I don't have, I don't know what to say but a book saved my life. I would have to say then, once I left the county jail and went into prison, I wish to go to the library. And I didn't know I've been in there, many a times playing around but this time I was looking for a book, what books stood out to me, and I was spent hours and hours in the library. And I noticed that the books are old. But we need help with the books. The librarian will show me you know what do you like and took time to ask me what did I like, and I will go every other two days and get a book and read. And if it wasn't for books, I would be on the screen talking to you, because that first book really saved my life and from then on, I've been invested in books by books now. I'm not going to say I bought, not to knock on your James Patterson but James Patterson is all in the prisons, but I just went bought me a James Patterson book 22 seconds, and I'm enjoying reading. And I mean, I think that's all I have to say, like books saved my life and books is important incarceration, because a lot of people don't have family that's writing them or have, have a getaway. So, a book means a lot when you're incarceration, incarcerated. Hello, everyone. Thanks for this opportunity to talk about public libraries, providing service at corrections facilities. My name is Daniel Mark who and I'm outreach librarian for Hennepin County Library. If you're unfamiliar with my library system were located in Minnesota, and the service area for 41 libraries include Minneapolis and the surrounding cities of Hennepin County. I'm an outreach librarian with Hennepin providing library service to adults and corrections facilities for the past 16 years. Before that I was a library director and worked in various other library settings for the past 35 years. Hennepin County Library has been providing outreach to corrections facility since 1971. And today I'd like to talk about library service and programs at the adult facilities we visit. Well corrections facility or ACF is a post sentencing County facility for adults. The average population is 400 men and 80 women, and almost 6000 people were incarcerated there annually before the pandemic. The average stay is 40 days, and the maximum sentence is one year. We offer direct library service and maintain to onsite libraries with a large collection based on residents reading interests. We provide library programs and create resources for residents there. The public safety facility or PSF is a pre sentencing facility for adults. As a result stays are much shorter, often overnight and approximately 35,000 people were incarcerated there annually before the pandemic. The amount of people is different at ACF or excuse me at PSF, and we don't interact directly with the residents as we do at ACF. Instead we restock 14 book carts every month and provide approximately 20,000 paper backs. We also provide books based on a wide range of reading interests and levels. PSF doesn't allow us to offer any programs, and that's likely due to the high volume but short stays of the residents there. Hennepin County Law Library also provides legal research for residents at both facilities, and Hennepin County library staff also provide library service and programs at juvenile and treatment facilities. Co-worker Heather and I visit ACF every week. We provide direct library service to the residents. In addition to access to the onsite libraries, residents can make up to five requests, which is a facility rule for books, magazines or information that isn't available in the facility library. When residents visit the library, they fill out a paper slip paper request slip, which is the photo on the left. And then we fill these requests with materials from the Hennepin County library system and our own outreach collections. Before the pandemic we took about 800 requests every week. And if you look at the photo on the right that was a typical week of visiting the facility. Residents can also request library materials through a secure website called the kiosk. The kiosks are free for the residents to communicate with staff and they're located throughout the facility, including in the separation and segregation units. The kiosk was an incredibly helpful communication tool during the pandemic and it allowed us to continue library service with only a two week service interruption in March 2020. Now I'd like to briefly discuss library programs that we offer at ACF. We focus on three different areas, adult literacy, early literacy and reentry. Also we evaluate all of our programs at the facility and make changes or develop new programs based on conversations that we have with residents and survey data. Examples of the adult literacy program include writing programs, author visits, and one read book discussions, where we offer residents a copy of a book that they can keep. And then we talk about it together as a group. Our goal has been to put books that are relevant to the residents lives, or ones that they would just enjoy reading. In one program we read and discussed a play together, offered writing workshops for the residents, and then published and performed the play the day and the writers had created. Whenever we discuss a book we try to bring in the author and people or information from relevant community organizations. I think that the value of these programs and reading can be best summed up in one of my favorite books about the role of reading inside facilities. The Swinian reading is my window writes reading in prison counters the forces of isolation, abandonment dehumanization by serving as an opening to other people ideas in the world outside the prison. Furthermore, reading generates possibilities for prisoners to reenvision and rescript their lives. And this is something that we see every time we visit the facility. And through our evaluations, we also have data that demonstrates that library service and the act of reading reduce emotional issues like anxiety and anger inspire learning and encourage positive social experiences during incarceration. Read to me is our early literacy program, but maybe even more importantly, it built a bridge between kids and incarcerated family members through books and reading. My grandparents aunts and uncles and siblings can all participate. And the program also tries to help children cope with their feelings of loss and other emotions because they're missing their family member who is incarcerated. During two informal classes library staff discuss early literacy and what libraries can offer to families, then residents select age appropriate books for their kids and record themselves reading them. They can be in flash drive with the recording and then mail them with the books and a photo of the resident to the children. The residents also get a certificate and complete an evaluation for us. Related to that, when ACF renovated their visiting area, our youth service staff created an early learning space in it. It was an opportunity to promote early literacy activities, but also help caregivers make young children feel less anxious during their visit to the facility. For reentry programs we provide community based reentry information to the residents before they're released, whether finding specific resources or providing it passively in the facility library. For example, if people need information for support groups GD classes or housing programs, we get that for them before they leave the facility to network with community organizations were part of a statewide reentry focus group called the transition coalition, which just stands facilitated through the Minnesota Department of Corrections. We also offer a program called the big idea which is a reentry focus book discussion with an author visit. One example of this was author Susan Burton visiting the facility and a community library to talk about her book becoming Miss Burton. We also teach a job resource workshop about how the library can help people with employment related needs after release. And really with all of our programs like this. Our goal is to just encourage people to use their community library with their families after release to We've also created several different resources, for example to learn as a grow guide and video focus on early literacy and libraries. We use this and read to me and have an insert with a list of age appropriate books to help kids better understand incarceration. We also created the going home guide and video to let people know how public libraries can be a reentry resource. These are also available in all of the Minnesota State prisons. The library service is part of the library's budget at 2.0 ft annually. All of our programming is funded through the friends of Hennepin County Library, and through their assistance we've also received other grants. One of the topics that we were asked to discuss is navigating potential issues. So I want to focus on three areas that I think are important to be aware of. One of them is inclusion when you're doing this kind of work. To me, the most important things to prevent issues are relationship building respect and trust. These three things will bring success to your program. I also think that these attitudes will help all of us from the library world balance access with the facilities needs around safety and security. Communication skills are essential for building effective relationships. In this work, you're talking to many different stakeholders. So making library and facility staff residents and community members including potential funders all aware of the service and its value. Communication never ends. And each audience requires a different style when you're advocating for your service. And then a lesser but lesser issue but still one that will always be present with library service in a facility is damaged and lost materials materials will get lost or damaged and that's just part of doing business in inside a facility. As library staff we want to be mindful of the system collection that we might be borrowing from and create our own for high demand books so that the system collection doesn't take as big of a hit. So why does library outreach to corrections facilities matter. These stats might already be well known but I think they're worth repeating. Almost 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. About 95% of people in prison will eventually be released and come back into our communities. And for example, 20% of people in Minnesota prisons will return to Hennepin County. So it's crucial to provide resources to make them more aware of how community libraries can help people prepare for successful reentry. Every library can play a role in helping people impacted by incarceration. Most communities have a public library that someone released from a corrections facility can visit for resources. These can also help families affected by incarceration and people under community supervision. The different things that I talked about today and Hennepin County library are just one example, but library programs and service for justice impacted people can be scalable, whether it's a full on outreach program, or just passive but relevant book displays. I believe that every library, big or small can play a role in this work. I'm always happy to talk about the work we're doing or help other people get this work going. So please contact me if you want to learn more about anything that I've talked about today, or if you're excited about starting a similar program and discussing it. Thank you. Hi, my name is Rachel Kennan and I manage the San Francisco Public Library jail and reentry services program. I've been a librarian with San Francisco Public Library since 2008 when I was hired to be the librarian at the juvenile justice center. And in 2017, the library agreed that we wanted to expand that program to provide service to adults who are incarcerated. So the program that I currently manage jail and reentry services has three components. The first one and the one that I'll talk the most about today is our weekly in jail library cart service and you can see our library cart and a patron on the slide that's up right now. Another component is reentry support and resources to people who were recently released from jail or prison in the Bay Area. I'll talk a little bit about that at the end of the training. And we provide reference by mail to people incarcerated throughout California and they will not have a chance to talk about that today. We will probably have trainings about that as part of this race. When we were getting started with our expanded program in 2017. One of the first steps we took was to connect with the director of programs at the San Francisco Sheriff's Office. The jails are run by the Sheriff's Office. And there are two of them currently in San Francisco. These jails are primarily pre sentencing detention centers. So most people who are in them have not yet had their case resolved. We were informed that at that point the jails did have some books inside them but they were pretty old 10 1520 year old paperbacks that were really worn out some of them were we did library books. Others had been donated and the Sheriff's Office was asking for more personal and customized service to people who are incarcerated there. The Sheriff's Office informed us of their three content restrictions. And I'm not going to go into these restrictions too much that would be a whole nother big conversation to talk about censorship and book banning inside jails and prisons. But I do want to talk a little bit about rule number two about not having materials that insight violence. Because we are working inside a jail and the jails are part of a racialized and racist system in this country. We interpret that rule as pretty much meaning we do not provide materials that are based in white supremacy that are anti Semitic, or that are anti LGBT or transphobic. We do circulate books, many books in fact about revolutionary black history, many of which are banned from other prisons and facilities inside the United States. Again there's lots to say and we're happy to be in touch with other information providers who work inside these crystal facilities about content restrictions that at this point I'm just going to kind of leave that there and I wanted to touch on our interpretation of that. So we're preparing the program we also visited the county jails to see what our spaces would look like and we learned that we would not have dedicated library spaces that incarcerated people can actually come in. Instead we would have storage spaces inside the jail for our books and our equipment, but we were to move the library cart around to the different living areas, usually called pods or units inside the jails. Sometimes we push the cart from cell to cell and sometimes people are able to come out into the common area to look through books. We also conducted a paper survey of our incarcerated patrons who were there in 2017 to find out what genres they were most interested in and whether they had previous experience with public libraries. Not surprisingly at all, there was very widespread interest in many different genres, much like you would find at any general use public library. And also not surprisingly, most of the survey respondents had already been active library patrons prior to their incarceration. And then MOU as we were getting started that MOU is still not an absolute final form, but it is a helpful tool when things come up and we're, and we have any issues with access to our patrons or people access to different books we refer to it and we would be happy to share that draft MOU with other libraries and in time to As I go on through my slides, you'll see that there are some purple quotations or testimonials from current and former patrons of ours and some photos of them as well. So currently, we are providing library service every week within the two county jails and monthly service to the youth at juvenile hall. Because there's only a couple of us librarians and there's about 800 people in the county jails that can take us about a month to make the rounds of everybody who is in the jails. We prioritize people who are inside the highest restriction housing units, which in our case is the medical and psych areas of the jail. We see them every week. So we bring the book truck around to medical and psych every week so that people can get new books every week. But other folks might go three or four or even five weeks in between visits from the librarian and the book cart. We recognize that is far too long to go between library visits. The jail rule is that an individual can borrow only two books from the library at a time. So because of that limited access to the books we have a very informal checkout process for our patrons. We write down a patron's last name and that they've borrowed one or two books the maximum number that they can get again is two. And then we encourage patrons to share books with one another, and then to return the librarians any two of our library books the next time they see us they do not need to be the same books that the patron borrowed from us. Again, that's just to increase the availability of different kinds of books for each person. And we find that most people are very accountable and want to return their library books because they understand that a library functions only when the books are returned and we need them. I do see some damage from our some loss and damage of library books. We like Dan was saying find that most of that is simply due to what life is like inside a jail, more than any kind of ill intent or malicious destruction of the books. You know people are living in their cells with a toilet and a sink and very little space and people are not always able to be responsible for their materials that things are taken away things are lost. All kinds of issues can come up that prevent people being able to take excellent care of their materials. And so we need to recognize that when we go into a jail facility and we know that some damage will happen. The majority of the damage we see though is simply that books are read by so many people between our library visits that the life of the book is just used up between our visits. We do see that books are read by between five and maybe even 50 people in the several weeks between our library visits and five to 50 starts is a generous lifetime for a paperback library book anyway so if a book comes back to us very worn out. We just know that it did what it was supposed to do it gave people something to read while they were incarcerated and we replaced the book if we can. We have a separate library collection for our jails we do not use the larger San Francisco Public Library collection for various reasons, but we find that works really well with helping the librarians maintain those content restrictions, and for knowing when we have extra copies of a certain title to easily replace books. Here we have a couple more quotes from our library patrons, and in the middle there is a headline from a March 2022 article in the San Francisco Chronicle that was written about our program and books can go online and read that about our in jail library service if you're interested. And the photo is just a quick photo of some books from our bio collection in our storage area. So what I'm doing here is pulling a couple of bios out of our storage area to put them on our purple book truck stock it to bring it into a pod. When we stock a book truck and we do we stop the book truck in between every pod or unit and also we restock it in between even the tears the top tier and the bottom theory in the pod so that, whether you're the first person who gets library service in a day or the last person you should still have a pretty full pretty robust collection of books full from we restock it as often as we can. When we make our book truck we make sure we have several books of every genre that we have so we'll have several bios several fantasy and sci fi books several self help books always have books in Spanish and usually Chinese. And we make sure that we have that the risk collection available for every pod that we go into some of the pods do not have elevators to go between the top tier and the bottom tier. And we were stumped when we started service how will we provide library service to people on the top tier if we can't bring the book truck to them. But our solution to that is we fill milk crates with an assortment of books and we carry those up the stairs in the pod so people in the top tier if they can't come up to library truck still get a variety of books to pull from when we see them upstairs. And this is our ideal library service where patrons can come out to the book truck and really peruse the books in their own time. Since COVID lockdowns happens less and less because security issues are tighter but we are always happy when people can come out to the book truck and the books. We do take requests from our patrons. It's a lot of work for our staff to find books or order books that are requested by our patrons but we find it's really really worthwhile. Our patrons because of course when they start a series or when they find a topic or an author they like a lot, they want to continue with that, and we're able to usually bring bring people the next time we see them bring them the books that they've requested. But for us the real benefit of taking patron requests is that it guarantees that our collection is built by our patrons and that it's relevant to our patrons. Our requests have been one of the primary ways that we have built our collection over the past five years. So when somebody requests a book we take a look if it fits within the content restrictions which the majority of books do, then we'll try to buy it and we'll buy multiple copies of it so that we can circulate it in different parts of the jail facilities and see if it's popular in other parts of the jail as well. And again this is a really worthwhile way to make sure our collection is current and relevant to our patrons. During the COVID lockdowns, of course we were not able to go inside the pods but we were able to create little mini collections and bins that the deputies would distribute to people while they were in their cells or in their pods. And then we were the first program brought back inside to people after the lockdowns were lifted. This really showed that our service was valuable not just to the patrons but also to the administration who were putting a lot of thought and intention to bringing us back in as early as possible. So just a little bit about the reentry resources that we offer. Early on in our program we started to realize that we needed some written material to hand out to people about the public library if we knew that they were getting released. So we created a brochure, this is the cover of the brochure for people who recently experienced incarceration. And then on the inside of the brochure is actually a number of programs that were not new they were not created just for this flyer just for people who are recently incarcerated. So we also created programs that our public library was already providing, but that we knew would be of greater interest to folks who had been in jail or prison. So we pulled these out, we encourage people when they're getting released to go check out these programs or any others. And again this didn't require any extra work on the part of the library staff these programs already existed. So that shows map of the city with all of the different branches, library branches on it. We also table at reentry resource fairs and reentry events around San Francisco, and we have done presentations at transitional housing, as well as inside the jails to share information about library programs that folks can participate in once they're released. So that's a brief overview of the jail library services that we offer in San Francisco, my team is always happy to talk with other librarians about work that you're doing or that you want to begin doing and happy to provide any support that we can. Thank you. My name is Nick dam ski I'm the deputy director of the Racine public library and Racine Wisconsin, and I am very pleased and honored to get to be part of this webinar today about public library services for people who are incarcerated. I'm going to speak a lot probably less logistically and more emotionally and from a narrative lens than my colleagues are, but I'm hoping that just compliments what everyone is saying. Before I jump into sort of the main part of the presentation I just want to give a little very short overview of the community and the library that the community exists in. Our library is in the city of Racine, we have about 78,000 people there and the county it's in has about 200,000 in its entirety. Our municipality, the city of Racine is chronically underfunded and naturally that affects the library and the services that we can provide to the community in all sorts of ways. The community has significantly high poverty rate and usually the highest unemployment historically almost always the highest unemployment in the state which is a big deal even higher than Milwaukee, which is probably the second in the state of Wisconsin. It's also a majority BIPOC community, the city of Racine anyways, the primary demographics being white black and Latinx here. Now, given that context, the Racine public library, we have a $4 million budget, which is down for by about 250,000 from before COVID still. We have usually at any given time about 65 staff members we have only one branch and one bookmobile. And that is to serve not just the city of Racine, but twice the population of the city of Racine our service area is about 137,000 people. So we're serving several municipalities in that. So the last thing that I'll say about that sort of that sort of context that we're in what that means for the Racine public library in the city of Racine. The state of Wisconsin has library standards the Wisconsin library standards, and their, you know, their market is tier one, tier two and tier three, tier one being kind of basic, you meet the basic standards, tier two being your better you know you're sort of in a good place as in terms of library services and tier three being your providing excellent services. I just want to mention that the Racine public library. I've been at the library for over 15 years now. And so long as I've been here, or at least so long as I remember we have never even met the basic criteria for the Wisconsin library standards by the metrics that that they write that up at. The Racine public library has a hard time providing even basic services. But even even with that, fortunately, we are able to, you know, do do some things outside of the norm for a lot of libraries like provide services to some of our patients who are incarcerated. So move on to the main substance of the presentation now but I want to say first normally, if I were to present on library programs. You know, I would have a few dozen slides of pictures to share, because mass incarceration depends on a certain invisibility to survive. We've never been able to photograph our program so I don't have any here today. I was tempted to show photographs of statistical graphs or just grim institutions just to have visuals to work with. Conversely, I considered just having a blank black screen the whole time to make a different point. But instead, since so much of this work is about bringing for me anyways about bringing the beautiful things in this world back into institutions designed to be evacuated of them. So I'm just going to flash pictures of those things that bring me joy. So family, nature, culture, beauty, in hopes it brings you joy today, and in hopes it reminds all of us that this is part of our obligation as librarians to work to bring beauty and encouragement in all kinds of spaces designated to a press. So we'll start with this one from our most recent Hispanic Heritage Month event. So the Racine Public Library has been fortunate to bring a number of different services to our patrons experiencing incarceration. We started a meditation series ever seen youthful offenders correctional facility in which some of the participants eventually started leading the sessions themselves. A chess club at the same institution led by a volunteer community member at a different facility, the juvenile detention center one of my colleagues helped turn an unused space into a library, brought in hundreds of book donations for free. We're working in a speaker series of X incarcerated people who are now community leaders to that space to show the children in custody there that a thriving life is certainly still possible after experiencing incarceration. Right now we're coordinating with the local state prison for 17 to 24 year olds to host a FAFSA application workshop, exclusively for parents of young men who are in their custody, and who will be pursuing their college studies while incarcerated. We've done a number of other small things over the years, but my favorite by far has been working with a group of writers who are at the adult men state prison Racine correctional institution, or RCI. The writers call their group pros and cons spelled P R O S E very cleverly. The poetry and music performance series for the Racine Public Library for 12 years called bonk. So I had a lot of experience creating events for the community where poets and musicians would come from elsewhere in the region and all over the country to perform and Racine. We have a national reputation. We're able to feature Pulitzer prize winners national book award winners, NAACP image award winners and many others do this work. And through this work I developed a great network of poets and musicians regionally and beyond. Here I think 2012 or so I found out a poet and writer from neighboring Milwaukee, Dasha Kelly Hamilton, who side note is now gladly the poet laureate of the state of Wisconsin have been coming to Racine Dasha had been coming to Racine correctional for years, not to host writing workshops, but also it turned out to do a once a year big house show where she would bring poets musicians and other performing artists, primarily from Milwaukee to perform for about 50 men in the library at RCI. I connected with Dasha and through the library started helping her bring Racine based poets and musicians in as well. I was able to do this once a year during the holiday season. Since all the men at RCI who would participate said this was one of the highlights of their year. I offered to bring these poetry and music performances quarterly through my work at the Racine library. As we came more often. I talked with the RCI librarian and arranged it. So the performers coming from outside of RCI would perform first, but then we would sit be the audience for the second half and cheer on the writers of pros and cons as they perform their work for us. Easily became the most meaningful part of our visits just coming and listening to these men bear the most vulnerable parts of themselves to us felt incredibly transformative for everyone on all sides of the exchange. I want to not leave out the pros and cons group was founded by a man named Dan Scheidel. I met him inside RCI as he was serving his 19th year of a 25 year sentence for the entirety of his incarceration, he'd maintained that he was innocent. In Wisconsin that meant he was never eligible for consideration for parole. They treated as a sign of someone not admitting their true guilt. Dan ultimately served 21 of those 25 years but then was scouted by the Wisconsin innocence project, released because of DNA testing via technology that didn't exist when he was convicted. And ultimately, despite the state fighting it tooth and nail every step of the way, Dan Scheidel was fully exonerated of the crime. When he was released, he immediately joined the library's writer group and started volunteering for the bog performance series. He is still living and writing in receive today, just no longer from a key. Thanks to collaborating with pros and cons group that Dan created while being wrongfully incarcerated for over two decades. The library had a built in community ready to go to build our programming with history and music performances we were hosting were so powerful that some wise internal stakeholders at the prison made the decision to move them from the small library where only the men of pros and cons group could fit into the gymnasium where our audiences were about 400 for every event. This meant that the programs we were doing in this prison were now better attended than almost all the other programs the library offered the community. I could talk about the logistics of the programs or the difficulties in coordinating bringing a dozen people into a secure facility every few months but what feels most worth talking about is the small details that I remember for my years of doing this work. I want to share just one detail one memory to emphasize why the human element of the work is ultimately what really matters most in my mind. When we were working with pros and cons writers group. I got pretty close with a lot of the members as did some of the other poets and musicians who would come with me right. Though touching was prohibited we came to greet each other with depths and hugs when we would come into the facility. And the guards knew us well enough that they would never stop us fortunately. I could tell a ton of stories about each of the writers they're sensitive, insightful, often brilliant and all unique from one another. But one writer who stood out everyone either called diesel because he was super muscular or Billy Dee because with his hair slicked back in a process. He looked like a really buff Billy Dee Williams. Billy Dee is an imposing man arms bigger than my legs, and he clearly commanded respect among his peers. So the first time he stepped to the podium to spit poetry. I was really curious what would come out. I was surprised in two different ways. One, he had a serious stutter that would try to wrestle away his words when he was there, like a very serious stutter. And to every poem he shared was a very wholesome almost hallmarky romantic love poem. To hear this Hulk of a man not only share his intimate tender love poetry, but to also heroically struggle through a brutal stutter to do so a stutter so brutal. That there would be moments in every poem where each of us listening would get scared, anxious, and a little unsure if he'd be able to do it unsure if he'd be able to make it through. It was something to behold, and it was something that would leave those of us coming from the outside inspired and talking about it for weeks afterwards. One time during one of our visits I mentioned to Billy Dee that every time myself and one of the other visitors saw each other we would inevitably bring up how inspired we were by his last reading. That day, before I could leave, Billy Dee stopped me more than once thanked me and said you don't know what that means to me to hear that. I brushed it off nonchalantly saying something like it was a great reading why wouldn't we still be talking about. But then he stopped me again, I when I tried to walk away. This time he said, I'm 39 now. When I came here, I was 16. To hear that anyone is talking about something I wrote beyond these walls, you just don't know what that means to me. And I realized in that moment he was right. I didn't understand, and I couldn't understand. But he at least made it clear to me that if his name could be spoken beyond the razor wire if even a shred of his story could be told but it meant he still existed beyond the walls. That's part of why I share this story now to honor just one of the people there whose kindness and talent and perseverance has impacted my life in a way that I carry with me everywhere I go still. I'll conclude by again trying to emphasize that it's not about whether you bring poetry readings or workshops or book groups or chess clubs or anything else specifically into an institution of incarceration. I believe the real value isn't simply being there, being there consistently, and bringing an openness to connect with the people there in a way that goes beyond transactional library service exchange. And if you're able and willing to do that, you will not just be benefiting the members of your community, who potentially have the most to benefit from it. You'll end up probably a deeply changed person yourself and walking away with dozens of small moving and challenging moments, like the one Billy D bless me with that day. I'd be happy to talk about logistics or anything else with anyone who is interested in connecting more. This is my information. So please reach out if you're interested. Thank you all so much. Nick, Daniel and Rachel for your excellent presentations, and thank you Jeannie and Sally for all of your work in organizing these training sessions. My name is Jodi Reddifer, and I work for the Multnomah County Library in Oregon. Our library system consists of a central library and 18 neighborhood libraries, as well as a community services division, which is where I work. I work at Dolly Long in collaboration with the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, and the Multnomah Education Service District, which is the school district that operates within the detention center. So before I get into the what and how of the work that I do, I want to talk a little bit about the why. First off, I have been justice involved in my lifetime. And one thing I have come to realize is that we are all a work in progress. We as humans are never the same person that we were the day before. When we were given opportunity, we had the chance to grow and evolve beyond what we thought possible. At least that's been my experience. So I see the main goal of library services as creating opportunity. This can take many different forms, access to knowledge via books, teachers and other media, access to creative tools that can be used to express oneself and grow artistically, and the availability of facilitated group time to discuss ideas and information. But honestly, I think one of the most important opportunities that can be created is the opportunity for someone to realize that people care. Just showing up is actually a really big deal. I find this to be true with the youth and detention, as well as the youth I work with at the high schools in the community. So considering this work, I would say that lived experience, training and education can definitely be beneficial. But the desire to do the work and showing up on a regular basis are what really informs the work and helps to navigate obstacles when they arise. Okay, on to the what and how. The juvenile detention center is located about four miles from the heart of Portland, Oregon, and houses pre-judicated youth from Altnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties, as well as youth who are facing parole and probation violations. There was also a separate unit for youth in transition called assessment and evaluation. These are kids that may have fallen through the cracks in the foster care system can no longer live with family for various reasons, youth waiting to be released, or youth waiting to go into various programs which are alternatives to long term detention. The demographic of the youth varies from week to week, but generally speaking, the youth are predominantly black and brown, which is why the position I hold was created with a black cultural knowledge skills and aptitude attachment. The ages can range from 13 to 25, but the average age is between 15 and 18, and the state can last anywhere from two days to two years or more, depending on the circumstances. There are four detention units at Dolly Long and two assessment and evaluation units. Every unit has a classroom attached that is run by the Multnomah Education Service District. We were actually able to embed library services at Dolly Long through our connection to the classrooms. However, it was a two year process to get everything approved and the position in place. Sometimes it can be difficult to convince management at carceral settings that it would be a good idea to bring in outsiders to provide services. Fortunately, the detention center is also run by Multnomah County, which made it a bit easier. The detention center has had books available to the youth for quite some time. In fact, we have about 8000 titles in the collection, which I am able to curate in real time. One of the ways I do this is to talk to the kids and see what they're really interested in. The youth are some of the best selectors for their library. I had one patron come to me and tell me he hadn't read a book since the fourth grade, but his buddy on the unit turned him on to a K-1 book and now he was looking for more K-1 books to read. So I asked the youth what they're looking for before I place my book orders and I always have a bunch of requests as well. I will add that patron input is particularly important for the Spanish language collection because I do not speak Spanish. The books that I choose are usually new releases as well as books that shed light on why things are the way they are in the world and what we can do personally in community to change our outlook and the reality of our shared environments. So aside from K-1 books, the library has a bit of everything that is marketed towards teens and young adults. We also have culturally specific collections for black, indigenous, Latinx, and LGBTQ folk, and plenty of biographies by people from marginalized communities. And did I mention we have a fairly large James Patterson collection? We also have several guided journals for youth to write in and take home such as the Mindfulness Journal for Teens, The Big Life Journal, and Self-Love for Teen Girls. As far as logistics go, the youth can have five books in their room at any given time. We do this on the honor system. There are no barcodes or checkout lists. We also maintain a book truck with about 50 to 80 titles on every unit. The kids come to the library once a week for book exchange, but I also hand deliver many titles throughout the week and do a sort of book talk in the classrooms once a month to deliver a stack of new titles to the units. I also maintain a close relationship with the teachers at DEL and help provide them with learning materials. Along with the library books, we try to make sure that the youth have library cards when they leave, as well as some knowledge of what resources the library has on offer. Aside from the library itself, we have a few programs that don't belong. One of the programs is a library volunteer program similar to the one that our neighborhood libraries have in place. The way it works is youth fill out an application and then go through an interview process. We ask questions like, is there a character in a book or movie that has inspired you? One of my favorite answers was by a young man who said, this person isn't from a book or movie, but my grandpa was locked up for 20 years and you wouldn't even know it except for the tattoos on his arms. He's one of the best people I know. Everybody in the community loves him and he's just a good person. My father and brother are always in and out of prison and my mom is always drunk. My grandpa is the person I really look up to. I really want to be like him. The application and interview process teach valuable skills that can be applied in different life situations later on and in different settings. Then we hire all of the applicants. Yes, they all get hired. And they come to work in the library. The work helps the youth to become familiar with books and literacy while they learn organizational skills, cooperation, problem solving, and help me curate the collection by shelving, weeding and selecting. One of the best parts about this program is that the youth can apply their volunteer hours to meet community service requirements and pay off court ordered restitution. These are often conditioned for release. So far we've had six kids able to leave because they completed their court order community service hours in the library. We also have a current events class that the youth can participate in. If the kids don't have access to media like newspapers and television news, we will present videos on specific topics and then sit and have a conversation. Afterwards, we'll check out the latest music videos by their favorite artists. Honestly, I'm surprised at how much young people know, and how much information is out there for them to process these days. We also promote parenting resources when I come across young parents. It's not often, but there are a few from time to time. I partnered with Shane Sowards, who is the director of Squires, an organization that mentors young fathers and young parents in Multnomah County. He puts on a young parent fair every year, which I have helped you to attend in the past. We offer young parents information and talk about the importance of early literacy for child development. I usually order some children's books for parents to send home as well. The program I want to talk about is pretty special to me because of the impact it has had on myself and as far as I can tell the youth that I work with. The program is a music writing and production workshop. On its surface, it is exactly what it sounds like we write produce and record music. However, when we look a little deeper, it turns out to be much more. There are several studies about how creating and studying the arts increases self-esteem, attention span, and reduces incidents of behavior that can result in undesirable consequences. But I can say that when I am working hands on with these kids recording music, it really seems like it can be life changing in a much deeper way for some. Most youth love music, but many have never had access to the means to produce and record their own music. Just a little history about me. I have been playing music, recording music and doing some producing for 25 or so years. I always have music on my mind and I am familiar with the musical process. So that is the lens through which I approached this project. However, I do believe anyone can start a music program. There are plenty of individuals and community partners around the country who would be more than willing to lend a hand if you are interested. And you can also feel free to contact me. At Don't Be Long, we started recording in groups. Staff would bring the whole unit anywhere from five to eight kids to the library to record. It's really pretty amazing when you get a group of kids together who wouldn't even talk on the streets or who may even be from rival gangs and you see them working together and helping each other write and critique the music. The group recording sessions can be pretty lively. There's usually a lot of laughing and joking around and definitely some dancing that happens. The kids I work with at Don't Be Long and Centennial High School all have fun doing group recording. Since we've started recording I make sure the library is always stocked with biographies of musicians, books of poetry, and quite a few rhyming dictionaries. I also am currently developing a basic music theory class at the request of some of the managers at the detention center. I would like to quickly talk about this thing that happens with pretty much all of the youth I record with over a long period of time. One of the first recording, oftentimes the first recordings are talking about material possessions and about how cool a person they think they are. There's quite a bit of bragging and with gang youth there's a lot of representing the gang and talk of violence in the form of defending territory or retaliation for an act done against their gang. But invariably the youth who stayed for a while will come to me and either ask for a one on one session where they can record alone, or maybe a session with just one really good friend. When this happens they will sometimes ask the detention staff to go into my office and shut the door while we record. And that's when this thing happens. The artists will tell their truth. The truth about how they feel, the truth about all of the things they've experienced, their needs, their desires, their sorrow, their joy, their anger, their fear, their hopes in life, their love, their loss, their addiction, their feelings of loneliness, and anything else they may have been holding on to. In other words, they will talk about all of the things that make us vulnerable. I've recorded youth talking about absolutely heartbreaking upbringings and the things that happened to them. This is the reason why I also work with one of the mental health counselors at Donnelley Long doing music therapy. It has been proven to be one of the best ways to process trauma. I've also recorded youth talking about their greatest joys and very special people in their lives, as well as their ambitions and where they see themselves in the future. In all of these sessions I see a lot of common threads among youth, especially the ones at Donnelley Long. This is how I know that life circumstances really can influence outcomes, and the more opportunities we make available, more likely it is that different outcomes will occur. This is one reason why I follow up with all of the youth and offer opportunities to record or just connect at a local library when they're released. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to work with these youth and watch them grow and evolve. One young man in particular comes to mind when I think of this work. He was considered the quintessential gangbanger. His uncle and father were gangbangers, so that's what he was taught to do growing up. He was at Donnelley Long for about 20 months and we work together a lot. You'll hear his music in just a minute. What I can tell you now is that he is at a different facility. He is 18 and already taking college courses. He's a peer mentor and will become a licensed drug and alcohol counselor in the next six months. He has already made plans to move to a different state when he is released so that he doesn't have to deal with anything that could be problematic in his old neighborhood. Whether or not library services were directly involved in this young man's growth and development is not really the point. He did all the work on his own, but the fact that he had opportunity and resources available to him so that he could make a choice is invaluable. And that is why we are here. Thanks for listening. I would love to hear any ideas people may have and I am happy to answer any questions about what the day to day looks like and obstacles I've faced. So feel free to get in touch. I'll let the young folks wrap this up with a small sample of the 200 plus songs we recorded over the past few years. So much pain. You all know. You all know. You all know that. You all know. Hey, I've been feeling lonely lately. These demons just want my soul. I've been praying every day, but lately I just feel lonely. It's like that I just want me dead. So I gotta keep a pulse. Like I gotta keep a smile. I know pop just want me home. Hey, it's getting lonely in my cell. I've been here for some time and got no weather in the mail. I've been trying to survive some of this pressure that I feel. But my heart's been damaged twice. It's gonna take some time to heal. Hey, where mama left us? It's like my family fell apart. I struggled with my past since I was young and I've been scarred but I miss talking to my grandma. She said I'm gonna make it far. Wonder why mama had to leave us every day. I haven't been to see me in a while, but it's all love. But it's all love. They ask me, who do you trust? Who do you love? They ask me, who do you trust? Who do you love? And lately it's been hard to sign with all these chilly nights and all these rainy days. That feeling from love just don't feel the same. That feeling from love just don't feel the same. The reason I like recording is it lets my mind get creative and just let go of everything. It keeps me looking at the positives and the negatives equally so I'm not being held down in my room inside my head. I'm not being restricted to just what I keep telling myself. I like recording because it just makes me feel good about myself. It's just something that you can get your emotions out with and just have fun and be goofy with it or be serious. You could talk about your life story and if you really need to. Just really get your point, like your story across to other people and it just feels better.