The New York Public Library has opened an unofficial branch at the Riker’s Island jail complex. Some of the titles available in the collection include The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Sarah Ball serves as the supervising librarian of this program. The New York Times reports that two of the most requested books from the inmates are The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the dictionary.
Here’s more from amNewYork: “The library holds 1,200 books—spanning everything from comics to sci-fi, from Spanish language works to nonfiction classics—and it will be open every Tuesday for about six hours each day. Inmates can check out two books for two weeks, with the goal of serving half of the prison one week and the other half the next.” (via American Libraries Magazine)