Avi Steinberg (pictured, via) wrote the memoir, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian. In a Boston.com op-ed, he explored the purpose of prison libraries.
Steinberg mentioned a specific inmate and prison librarian named Fat Kat. Following his release, the former inmate obtained a job as a community mentor.
Steinberg theorized in the article: “It doesn’t take an expert to know that a person who lands in prison, a person often already on the margins of society, will grow further isolated from the norms and routines of society while in prison. And yet, at the very same time, and in this very same building [the prison library], many inmates — often for the first time in their lives — are also quietly becoming enmeshed in an important social institution.”
Naseem Rahka explored the emotional complexity of prison in The Crying Tree. In an interview last year, she explained: “I have such a sense of compassion for people who everyone else has given up on. There’s so much they have to offer the rest of the world because they’re looking so deeply into themselves and what they’ve done wrong.”