Who We Are
Chicago Books to Women in Prison is a volunteer collective working to distribute books free of charge to women in prison nationwide. We are dedicated to offering women behind bars the opportunity for self-empowerment, education, and entertainment that reading provides.

What We Do
Incarcerated women send us their requests for books directly. We attempt to furnish the requested materials from our stock of donated books. We send three books in each package. We also furnish books directly to prison libraries.

Why We Do It
Reading the letters we receive from women in prison, one begins to get a sense of the overwhelming need for projects like this one. We hear over and over that rehabilitation is not a priority and prison libraries tend to be dismal, if they exist at all. A recent article in Third Coast Press describes one woman’s story as follows:

[A] newsletter contributor, Vinette Crowley, a.k.a. “Shorty,” is one woman whose life intersected with the Chicago BWP while she was serving three years and five months for a drug conviction at Pekin prison camp in Illinois. She is now 45 years old and has two sons and two grandchildren, one born while she “was away” and one born shortly after her release from Pekin last Fall. In her writing, she comes across as vibrant, self-educated and strong-minded—in her own words, “I get on my soapbox, sometimes.”

When she went into prison, she “had no clue about the laws…I got turned on to the BWP project by a librarian at the prison camp.” For Vinette, law books were the key: “I wrote and requested any and all law books that BWP could provide me…the books I received helped me to learn the law and to fight my way out of prison 19 months sooner [than] I was sentenced…” She also “turned several of the less fortunate women in Pekin onto the project…and was so happy to have them yell, ‘Shorty, I got the books!’”

You Can Help
Many of our regular volunteers cannot make this, as we generally meet on Sundays. If you would like to come by and help us pack books, please do!
(Try to arrive around 2, so we can help you get started)

4001 N. Ravenswood #204B (BeyondMedia
You can also stop by the project every Sunday at . We’re there between 2 and 5 PM.