<div class="gmail_quote"><br>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande">My
name is Barbara Kessel and I am a volunteer with <b><span style="font-size:large">Books to Prisoners</span></b>, an
organization that collects donated books from the community and ships them to
individual inmates at the 28 state prisons for adults + five federal
penitentiaries in Illinois. We have always imagined that our efforts
supplemented the prison libraries However, we discovered recently that the
state budget crisis began to affect the prisons seven years ago, long before it
has hit us in schools and social services. In these seven years, the prison
libraries have not had any budget to purchase anything, - books, newspapers,
magazines or scotch tape. Many of them are shut down for lack of a librarian. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande">
We would like to call your attention as taxpayers to the fact that
recidivism for 2009 in the state of Illinois was 51%, that is, over half of the
prisoners released, return for another incarceration. Research has shown that
any kind of educational factor while in prison - such as access to reading
material - reduces recidivism by as much as one third. If the recidivism were
reduced by 1/3 in Illinois that could save us $17 million, not to mention the
human savings of making families whole again. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande"> Our own
efforts here in Champaign-Urbana make a modest but significant difference to
thousands of prisoners. You can be part of that by coming to our book sale
where we make the money to pay postage. <span style="font-size:large">The Book Sale, "Pages for
Pennies" is going on today, Friday from 4 to 8, tomorrow 8 to 5 and Sunday
10 to 2 at the old Post Office in Urbana, Broadway and Elm. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande"> However, it is
impossible for us to replace the prison libraries. Thus, we urge you to help us
with your ideas for how to keep open access to books in prison, to talk to your
state legislator, or to join us in a campaign of working with the Illinois
Department of Corrections to maintain the prisoners' right to read, so they can
take the smart way out and never return. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:LucidaGrande"><span style="font-size:large"><a href="http://www.books2prisoners.org" target="_blank">www.books2prisoners.org</a>, website of
Books to Prisoners. </span></span></p>
</div><br>
<br />--
<br />This message has been scanned for viruses and
<br />dangerous content by
<a href="http://www.mailscanner.info/"><b>MailScanner</b></a>, and is
<br />believed to be clean.