We’re happy to share some of the recent thank you letters PLP has received from book recipients. Many of them are now posted around our library for volunteers to browse. It’s a pleasure to know books are “saving lives” behind bars.
It’s always fun to see which books on our shelves match up with requests from readers.
To end the year, here are some highlights from PLP’s busy 2025:
— PLP established an Anti-Censorship team (ACT) to start pushing back on tightening restrictions from prisons about the books we send. Our first effort is to target jails in California (some nearby and in the Bay Area) that won’t even allow us to send NEW, high quality books to incarcerated readers.
–Sent over 15,000 packages to incarcerated people, amounting to over 45,000 books!
–Held over 260 book packing sessions (3 hours each), including some with local high school students. That’s over 6,000 volunteers hours responding to letters alone!
— And more…
In fall of 2025 a small team of volunteers initiated a review of 1,350 letters requesting free books that volunteers processed in Sept. 2025. We’re excited to share some of the results of the data collection project below. The complete slideshow can be seen here.
It’s time for our annual #GivingTuesday campaign, and we at Prisoners Literature Project have again put together $3,000 in matching funds, so the dollars you donate can be doubled from now until the end of December. As many of our supporters know, we rely solely on donations from individuals and organizations to continue sending more than 3,000 books to incarcerated folks every single month. Key facts for you: […]
For the past several years, PLP has hosted students from Berkeley High School’s Law and Social Justice program. The students come twice a semester to respond to letters from incarcerated readers all over the country. The students select books, fill out address labels and invoices (including personal note to the recipient on the back) for the packages. Kids of this […]
Once again we are in awe of the appreciative letters that we receive daily here at PLP. So much good will coming from book recipients behind bars.
As an organization that sends books on so many different topics to incarcerated readers, we are used to getting letters from prisons saying a book that we sent (seemingly uncontroversial) is disallowed. Deep sigh. The new restriction then gets added to the list for that facility and we re-send a different book to the incarcerated person. It’s an ongoing […]
As an all-volunteer organization we rely on each other to enhance and expand our efforts. One volunteer decided we should stock kids books and now we do! Incarcerated people write to us asking for these books so they can read them over the phone to their kids or during in-person visits. 😍
Prisoners Literature Project is an inclusive, all-volunteer, grassroots nonprofit whose purpose is to encourage reading, the pursuit of knowledge, and self-determination among incarcerated people. By sending free reading materials to those behind bars, PLP aims to foster learning and critical thinking and help people prepare to lead successful lives after incarceration. We believe that all people have a right to read.
