People Against Prisons Aotearoa

Abolitionist Demand 36: Ensure every prisoner has an irrevocable right of access to a high-quality library, which includes LGBTIQ-affirming literature.

This is a part of No Pride in Prisons’ Abolitionist demands. These demands were originally published as a book. To see a pdf of the book, click here. To buy a copy, please email info@noprideinprisons.org.nz

Libraries need to provide books for all incarcerated people including specifically LGBTIQ-affirming literature for respite, entertainment, and education. Prison is a place where a person’s sense of who they are and what they have been through can be invalidated.^[1] This can particularly be the case for trans women who are being held in men’s prisons and who are, by definition, having their identity invalidated by the Department of Corrections. Incarcerated people should have access to narratives and histories that validate who they are and what they have been through, and that can help them find or affirm their sense of self.

As a Department of Corrections study demonstrates, as many as 71% of incarcerated people in New Zealand prisons are unable to read at “the level at which a person is able to cope with the demands of everyday life and work in a complex, advanced society.”^[2] A well-resourced library can provide incarcerated people with the opportunity to learn where the New Zealand education system failed them. In this way, reading can also provide knowledge for rehabilitation and other skills needed for the outside. For these reasons, No Pride in Prisons demands that all prisoners have consistent, unimpeded access to a high-quality prison library which contains LGBTIQ-affirming literature.

^[1] Jason Lydon et al. Coming Out of Concrete Closets: A Report on Black & Pink’s National LGBTQ Prisoner Survey, (United States: Black & Pink, 2015), 56.

^[2] Jill Bowman, “Assessing the Literacy and Numeracy of Prisoners,” Practice: The Corrections Journal 2, no. 1 (2014): 39.