“What we have most here is time. Of course we will read everything, everything from a book, even if we are less interested in it. The woman who speaks about reading in this way, whose face Le Devoir will not see for security reasons and will not know the name, is in Leclerc prison in Laval. She is, she says, the smile in her slow, steady voice, a more patient reader since her incarceration. Her two borrowed books a week – that’s the maximum – she reads them in their entirety, whether she really likes them or not. Small portrait of libraries and, in hindsight, readers behind bars.
“The library is really a great vehicle to carry out our mission, especially for social reintegration,” analyzes Joëlle Poirier, prison counselor in charge of activities and the library at Leclerc prison in Laval.
“We are very proud of our library,” says Mrs. Poirier. We think she’s physically beautiful and she’s well-endowed at £10,000. We have reached our maximum. The challenge, she continues, is that I’m not a librarian. And there are all the security issues that predominate. »
This constant need for security characterizes prison libraries. The beautiful library run by Mrs. Poirier, for example, is not visited by women in prison. “Several reasons are given as to why users are prevented from visiting the library and freely using on-site services,” writes Romy Otayek, a PhD student in library science from the University of Montreal, in her recent portrait of the library in Quebec’s prison environment.
Security of the premises is mentioned most frequently (54%), followed by lack of staff (45%) and lack of space (36%) according to Ms. Otayek’s figure. His study is the first in Quebec since 1973 to turn binoculars on the province’s prison libraries. There are 18 detention centers under provincial jurisdiction in Quebec: 15 participated in the researcher’s survey.
Of these 15 facilities, 11 do not allow the prison population to visit and use the on-site library. A single facility allows all prisoners to use the library. Three are accessible to all except those who are isolated or hospitalized.
So, at Leclerc, no loitering between shelves, no finger-snapping around the edges to instinctively pick a title at the end. Two directories are circulating. “We have keywords and book titles to choose from,” explains the inmate. The back, where the book is summarized, is not accessible. “Word of mouth also helps us choose,” says the woman who loves Danielle Steel’s books and currently reads Rand and Robyn Miller’s Myst series.
“Each company has its own approach,” explains Romy Otayek in an interview. We choose from the catalog and have it delivered, or we collect our selection. We line up, we quickly choose our book, we go. There are several ways to do this. » All the libraries surveyed are open at least once a week.
read slowly
In Quebec, only one facility allows up to six documents to be borrowed per week; 40% of the facilities allow prisoners to borrow two documents and 20% only allow one possible borrowing. In addition to books, you can borrow games, puzzles and magazines. Of the 15 institutions, 13 indicated that they had no newspaper subscriptions.
There is a significant gap in prison library utilization rates. The three busiest see 90%, 75%, and 60% occupancy rates, respectively. Of the 12 establishments that answered this question, six are 25% or less. How do you explain it? Ms. Otayek does not know. Especially since all responses from the libraries were anonymized for security reasons. It is therefore not possible to attempt correlations between the results, for example to see whether the size of a collection has an impact on the use of the library.
When Ricardo is useless
What do prisoners read? “Fiction (67%), biographies (33%) and comics (27%) are the top three most popular genres among inmates,” the study said. At the Leclerc library in Laval, “the most things that come out are novels, drama, science fiction, detective stories and personal growth,” says Ms Poirier. “The women here have time, they concentrate on themselves. »
For Joëlle Poirier, managing acquisitions is a problem for her library. The budget is very small. Donations are generous, but you must manage them. And sometimes they don’t meet the needs of female readers at all. “You have to think about the reality of detainees,” she explains. We recently received a large donation of cookbooks. That’s not practical for us. »
“It’s like garden guides. women don’t do it. Ms Poirier would like to add to or complete the range of crochet patterns that are in high demand – only crochet is allowed in the safe area, not knitting or embroidery needles.
What if she had a dream budget? “My God…” Ms. Poirier needs a little pressure to dare to name her ideals. “We could offer books in the mother tongue,” she thinks at first. For her part, in her survey, Romy Otayek notes that none of the institutions have a policy that takes into account the composition of their prison inmates; which would facilitate and justify the development of the collection. »
On his side. Mrs Poirier continues. “We could improve the way we work. Also establish activities and partnerships with public libraries. A similar ideal to that of the researcher Romy Otayek: “We should succeed in making the prison library accessible so that the place can also serve to bring inmates together, so to speak as a third place even to the prison. But that’s my personal opinion, not that of the companies…”