Camy Matthay co-founded Wisconsin Books to Prisoners in 2006. For 18 years, she and her team of dedicated volunteers have sent over 70,000 books to prison inmates in Wisconsin. It has been proven that inmates who read while incarcerated are significantly less likely to reoffend. Why, then, would Sarah Cooper, administrator for the Division of Adult Institutions in Wisconsin, suddenly decide to ban inmates from receiving these free books? Even though there’s never been one instance of contraband entering any of Wisconsin’s 20 state prisons from this non-profit group, Cooper believes that bad actors could potentially send drugs into the facility by using a fake return address label, thereby impersonating the Wisconsin Books to Prisoners organization.
In this episode, Camy tells her story of why she started this program, how many inmates she has helped, and why she believes that restricting books to inmates will ultimately make society a much more dangerous world. She also discusses the sad realities of budget cuts leading to antiquated prison libraries with little or no access for inmates. Is the potential prevention of drugs entering the facility really the reason for this ban? Or could something far more sinister be at play here?
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