About Us

Books To Oregon Prisoners & Portland Books To Prisoners are Sister Projects:

Who We Are
Books to Oregon Prisoners and Portland Books To Prisoners are both all-volunteer collectives working to distribute books free of charge to prisoners. We are dedicated to offering  people behind bars the opportunities for self-empowerment, education, and entertainment that reading provides.

Portland Books To Prisoners (pdxbtp) and Books To Oregon Prisoners (BTOP) are both all-volunteer projects; Portland Books To Prisoners sends literature and educational books to people who are incarcerated across the nation. pdxbtp accepts donations of nearly all used books (see subject matter below; paperbacks are best). BTOP only sends books to people incarcerated in Oregon Prisons, and can only use new books (both hardcover and paperback) due to Oregon's Department of Corrections regulations governing incoming books.

What We Do
Incarcerated prisoners send us their requests for books directly. We attempt to furnish the requested materials from our stock of donated books.  We also sometimes send resource guides and periodicals to help prisoners locate a variety of services, and prison support groups. 

Why Are We Doing This?
Prison libraries tend to very limited, and access to them is often highly restricted, so outside sources of books for prisoners is often necessary.  At most prisons there are very few books available, and often what is there consists mainly of low quality pulp fiction like romance novels and action thrillers. People are in prison for many reasons, but the vast majority are imprisoned for nonviolent crimes. There are dozens of Prison Book Programs all over the U.S. and there are often many restrictive regulations governing books sent to those behind bars, making it hard for those with limited means to send books to loved ones, or for those who are incarcerated to receive relevant reading material.

The US currently has over 2 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons, 2/3 of whom are people of color www.cccr.org. The Prison Industrial Complex is a repressive system, which we believe needs to be changed. One thing we can do to reach out to people held prisoner in this system is to provide a few books to help folks pass the time and try to educate themselves. Please join us in this effort!

You Can Help!
Both groups are looking for books with educational content: foreign language learning, materials in Spanish, radical fiction, poetry, music, trades, hobbies, crafts, business. We get a lot of requests for History/herstory, and biographies, especially African-American, Indigenous, Latina/o, Asian and queer studies, feminism, literature by and for women, and most importantly dictionaries, thesauruses and GED study guides.

• Volunteer: Help us open letters, match up requests, and package books.
• Donations: Other than the obvious need for postage funds to cover shipping costs, we are primarily looking for donations of books with educational content in English and Spanish.  Our most common requests are for dictionaries.  We are also looking for office supplies to print fliers, etc.  Monetary donations are always appreciated!

  Portland Books To Prisoners can take gently used and newish paperbacks and good quality hardbacks.  There are drop boxes at several locations around town.

  Books To Oregon Prisoners can only use brand new books donated directly from the publishers. If you would like to help BTOP solicit book donations or help with grantwriting for this group, please contact us, or stop in at the mailing days every Tuesday from 5PM-8PM at 6315 NE Rodney Ave.

Contact Us

• pdxbookstoprisoners@riseup.net is the contact for Portland Books To Prisoners. Mailing Nights are Mondays and Wednesdays at 5-8 pm at 1112 NE Morton.
• bookstooregonprisoners@gmail.com is the contact for Books To Oregon Prisoners. Mailing Days are every Tuesday from 5PM-8PM at 1112 NE Morton

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