Libraries can be a lifeline for people who are incarcerated or detained and their families and communities, especially at this critical time in our nation’s history when many library, education, and social service practitioners are working to address the socioeconomic gaps that often lead to incarceration. In 2021, a task force of correctional library workers and other institutional stakeholders headed by ODLOS began work on a massive reimagining of the American Library Association’s 1992 Library Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions.

The new edition will be forward looking and expand the scope of the standards to be as inclusive as possible. The new Standards will heed the current phenomenon of mass incarceration, the inequitable incarceration rates of BIPOC individuals, and the rising rates of incarceration of women (especially women of color) and pay special attention to the incarceration of LGBTQIA+ individuals, undocumented individuals, and youth in jails, prisons, and other detention facilities, as well as to the information needs of returning individuals.

Coverage will include how libraries and library staff can partner with stakeholders to meet the literacy, learning, and recreational needs of individuals of any age held in jails, prisons, detention facilities, juvenile facilities, immigration facilities, prison work camps, and segregated units within any facility, whether public or private, military or civilian, in the United States and its territories. The new standards expand to cover women, LGBTQIA+ folks, the aged, people with dementia, people with special access needs, and foreign nationals, thus the new title: Standards for Library Services for Incarcerated and Detained Individuals.

These guidelines will include the history of prison library standards, the audience for which these standards are intended, the Prisoner’s Right to Read, and Legal Policy Context. They are informed by research and experience, the recently approved International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) prison library guidelines, as well as the 1992 ALA guidelines and a multitude of related documents to produce these standards.

The Standards have been updated as part of the Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People initiative, based in San Francisco Public Library’s Jail and Reentry Services program and in coordination with the American Library Association. This project exists to locate library services to incarcerated people and to support the development of new services. This initiative and these resulting Standards are made possible by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.