This document discusses how fiction and literature can change the lives of offenders and potentially reduce recidivism. It provides examples from offender testimony of how certain books allowed them to see themselves or their past actions in new ways. Research studies have also found that literary programs in prisons can lead to "internal paradigm shifts" in offenders. The core competencies of librarians, such as interacting with diverse user needs, can help facilitate these changes through exercise, fiction, and challenging intellectual works.

1. The Power of Fiction to
Change Lives
Indications that offenders can change
their lives and improve their futures by
reading stories.

2. Core Competencies in
User Services:
 Interact successfully with
individuals…provide consultation and
guidance
 Reach specific audiences;
 Assess and respond to diversity in user needs and user
communities;
 Assess the impact of situations on
implementation of services.

3. Offender Patrons tell
their stories…

4. “I’d never read a novel
in which the
characters took drugs
and listened to indie
music and I devoured
it in one sitting,”
Kester Aspden, 2014. Image: Pikes Peak Library District

5. I haven’t read a
book that’s had the
power to make me see the
criminal side of me…
“this book was really good for me…
Image: Pikes Peak Library District

6. …[but] I saw the way I
raised my children in
each of those
characters.”
offender named Denise,
from Sweeney,
Megan, 2008.
Image: Pikes Peak Library District

7. Professional Research__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________
Literature in prisons
“…it was clear from participant
testimony that the extension or recovery
of repertoires of value…had led to
internal paradigm shifts in the course of
twelve months,” Josie Billington, 2011, p.
77.

8. Public domain image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare.jpg
Even Shakespeare can have an impact!
Laura Bates,
English Professor and volunteer says…

9. “…many prisoners discover, sometimes to
their surprise, that the questions posed by
Shakespeare’s centuries-old plays may be
more relevant than many would assume.
Public domain image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare.jpg

10. Public domain image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare.jpg
“Inmates…often warm up to the challenge
of learning the plays written by the
intellectually demanding playwright, ”
(2013, Arts on the Inside, p. 30)

11.  Exercise core competencies
 Change the criminal mindset
 Effect future actions of offenders
 Reduce recidivism
The Power of Fiction to
Change Lives

12. ALA’s Core Competencies of Librarianship. Approved and
adopted as policy by the ALA Council, January 27th 2009.
Accessed February 13, 2015. http://tinyurl.com/ks2v2q3
Aspden, Kester. 2014. “Why books can set you free.” New
Statesman (1996). December 12-18. Accessed February 14,
2015. TWU EBSCOhost. Academic Search Complete.
Billington, Josie. 2011. "'Reading for Life': Prison Reading
Groups in Practice and Theory." Critical Survey 23, no. 3:
Accessed February 16, 2015. TWU EBSCOhost. Academic
Search Complete.
Works Citied

13. Works Citied
Lilienthal, Stephan. 2013, Feb. 1. “Prison and Public
Libraries.” Library Journal 138(2), 26-32. Accessed
February 16, 2015. TWU EBSCOhost. Academic
Search Complete.
Sweeney, Megan. 2008. “Reading and Reckoning in a
Women’s Prison.” Texas Studies in Literature and
Language 50 (3), 304-328. Accessed February 10,
2015. TWU EBSCOhost. Academic Search Complete.