Prison Law Libraries

With New York State’s recent adoption of a rule on Inmate Access to Legal Reference Materials, the article Ineffective Assistance of Library: The Failings and the Future of Prison Law Libraries, 101 Geo. L.J. 1171, is timely reading. See Westlaw or LexisNexis for digital access or check the Brooklyn Law School Library Circulation Desk for the print version.

The abstract reads in part:

The prison law library has long been a potent symbol of the inmate's right to access the courts. But it has never been a practical tool for providing that access. This contradiction lies at the core of the law library doctrine. It takes little imagination to see the problem with requiring untrained inmates, many of them illiterate or non-English speakers, to navigate the world of postconviction relief and civil rights litigation with nothing more than the help of a few library books. Yet law libraries are ubiquitous in American prisons. Now, in light of a technological revolution in legal research methods, prison libraries face an existential crisis that requires prison officials, courts, scholars, and inmates to reconsider the very purpose of the prison law library. .  . This Article uses original historical research to show how prison law libraries arose, not as a means of accessing the courts, but rather as a means of controlling inmates' behavior. . . This historical account helps explain a prison law library system that never really made sense in terms of providing access to the courts.