Wisconsin Books to Prisoners goes back to square one

Prison officials have offered a path forward, but it’s not great.

Back in fall 2024, we reported on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ tightening restrictions on prisoner access to books. A DOC official informed Madison non-profit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP) via email in August that the department had decided “to no longer allow books in from your organization.” WBTP interpreted this, reasonably enough, as a total ban on its ability to ship free books directly to people incarcerated in state prisons, something it has done since 2006 while navigating a number of DOC policy changes. 

This touched off a couple of very confusing months (read this piece if you would like to feel exhausted!), during which DOC insisted that it was only prohibiting shipments of used books. DOC claims that it needs various restrictions on books and mail to protect inmates and staff from contraband, particularly in spoofed mail—illicit mail packaged to look like it comes from a legitimate source, like a prisoner’s lawyer, a government agency, or WBTP. It has never shared data establishing that books are a significant source of contraband. A DOC spokesperson last fall shared reports about two shipments, purportedly from WBTP, that “tested positive for drugs” at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. DOC has not divulged whether or not it ever determined the origin of these shipments, or indeed if it even conducted a follow-up investigation.

Over the past few months, WBTP gradually resumed sending new books, says co-founder Camy Matthay. Meanwhile, Matthay and other WBTP volunteers have continued to correspond and meet with DOC officials including Deputy Secretary Mary Kay Sergo and Director of Adult Institutions Shannon Butcher, lobbying for used books to be allowed again. Then the DOC rejected a few recent packages of new books, for reasons Matthay says were either unclear or spurious. WBTP once again found itself at a standstill—unsure  how various prisons throughout the state would enforce rules consistently, and worried that its packages wouldn’t get to prisoners. Matthay says that out-of-state groups that send books to Wisconsin prisoners have also presently stopped for the same reasons.

In late March, DOC proposed a pilot program at the minimum-security Oakhill Correctional Institution near Oregon in which WBTP can route its books—new and used—through prison libraries. The trouble with this is that it’s just not how WBTP works. Like books-to-prisoners groups around the country, WBTP insists on the importance of getting free books directly into the hands of individual prisoners, specifically so that prisoners aren’t entirely dependent upon prison libraries and the limited selections of ebooks available on prison tablets. These groups aren’t simply fighting for incarcerated people to have access to books in a general sense, but specifically to have the dignity and agency of being able to pick out a specific title, then have it for your own or share with others—something people not living in cages frequently take for granted. 

“In other words, we aren’t Wisconsin Books to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections,” Matthay says.

Prisoners often end up donating their own books to prison libraries, Matthay notes, but the point is that it’s their choice. This decision by the DOC has set WPTB back at square one.

That said, Matthay intends to go along with the plan for a month, in an effort to keep working with DOC to find a better approach. Beyond that, she worries that WBTP would be straying from its mission. Not to mention the logistics: The organization is set up to take requests from individual prisoners and ship books to them. Donating books to prison libraries is a different process that follows a different section of DOC rules.

Matthay credits a lot of the individual DOC officials and staff she’s worked with for hearing out WBTP’s concerns. She says officials recently took her and other volunteers on a tour of Oakhill to walk through the proposed intake process for library donations, which includes checking books for contraband. The pilot may, at the very least, help WBTP better understand and navigate DOC rules, and create a clearer pathway for facilities across DOC.

“I have to say that I feel that there is goodwill on both sides to try to work this out,” Matthay says. DOC officials also offered to advertise the WBTP-via-library pilot to inmates, in hopes of generating enough requests to make the pilot a meaningful test of the system, Matthay adds. She also acknowledges that one recent incident was WBTP’s mistake—volunteers sent a shipment of new books in a box marked “used.”

Still, the underlying problem remains the same: The rules can seemingly shift at any minute, and it’s unclear how staff at individual prisons will enforce them on any given day. To reassure DOC that its packages are legitimate, WBTP makes sure to include duplicate receipts in its shipments, and has offered to share package tracking numbers with officials. The organization has been trying, for a long time, to follow DOC policies to the best of its ability, but still runs into walls. 

“One of our volunteers ended up calling and talking to either property sergeants or the officer in charge of the mailroom to get more feedback on what was going on,” Matthay says. “It was clear to [the volunteer] that no prison has a clear protocol—a clear understanding of what the current policy is.”

Several nationwide books-to-prisoners groups also used to send books to Wisconsin DOC facilities. Most of these groups don’t have an adequate supply of new books, and had to stop once DOC reinstated the used-book prohibition. Prison Book Program, based in Quincy, Massachusetts, had enough new books to keep shipping to Wisconsin. That stopped after staff at the maximum-facility Waupun Correctional Institution and Taycheedah Correctional Institution returned shipments of new books, says PBP Executive Director Kelly Brotzman. She’d heard from at least one prisoner in Wisconsin who never received a shipment PBP sent, and heard chatter within the community of books-to-prisoners groups that staff at some facilities were opening book shipments, then putting them in a locked room without ever actually getting them to the intended recipients.

The final straw for Brotzman came in early March, when an officer at Waupun emailed PBP to explain that he had rejected a shipment of nine books, claiming that all of them were used. Brotzman says that, in fact, all of them were new. These books included a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a GED study guide. “We buy those brand new from the publisher,” Brotzman says. “That’s really the only dictionary, GED study guide, and thesaurus we carry. [They’re] in brand-new condition.” Brotzman appealed the decision to the prison’s warden and is still waiting for a reply. 

At around the same time, Brotzman says Taycheedah was rejecting PBP packages on the grounds that the books did not come directly from a publisher. This only added to the confusion and frustration around DOC’s rules and their inconsistent enforcement from one facility to another.

“The only real policy I’ve heard is that books have to be in brand-new condition, and that there’s no limitation on approved vendors… as long as they’re in brand-new condition,” Brotzman says. “That had been my working understanding for years, but now it seems like at least at Taycheedah, whoever is in the property room or the mail room there thinks that books need to come from the publisher, which is ridiculous because most publishers don’t actually retail their books to consumers.”

“And one of the books that was impounded at Waupun, recently, was a book we publish,” Brotzman adds, referring to the legal resource books PBP publishes for prisoners.

Amid a rash of overdose deaths and an employee drug-smuggling scandal at Waupun, Brotzman points out that it’s absurd for the DOC to scapegoat books.

“Between you, me, and the lamppost, everybody knows how the drugs are coming in, and they are,” Brotzman says. “They’re flooding in, but everybody knows how they’re coming in, and it’s not in books… It’s being walked in by vendors, visitors, and staff.”

To add another wrinkle to all this: The DOC changed its rules in fall 2024 to prohibit prison libraries from accepting “donated used materials.” Accepting used books from WBTP for prison libraries would clearly violate that prohibition. There is also some confusion about how this impacts incarcerated people’s ability to donate their own books to prison libraries if they wish. Let’s say an individual prisoner receives a new book through the mail in accordance with DOC policy. The prisoner reads it, thereby rendering it “used,” and then wants to donate it to the library. Is that allowed?

If, at this point, you’re confused about how DOC makes policy decisions or what its policies are even meant to accomplish, join the club. I reached out to DOC officials for this piece with multiple specific questions, and have not received a reply. Prisons are among the most opaque areas of our society, and getting clear answers from DOC is like pulling teeth. All of this leaves me with a greater appreciation for the patient, diplomatic approach Matthay continues to take, even after nearly 20 years of back-and-forth with prison officials.

“The frustrating thing is that I really get the impression that they trust us,” Matthay says, referring to most of the individual DOC staff she’s talked with over time. “They feel we’re running an honorable project. All we want to do is to put books in the hands of prisoners.”