City County Building

The City County Building (CCB) is located at 210 Martin King Luther, Jr. Blvd. The jail facilities are on the sixth and seventh floors.

Jail Library Group volunteers fill crates with materials and requests that deputies take directly to jail inmates. Experienced volunteers are available to train new volunteers and accompany them on their first trips to the facility.

Getting there

After passing through Security on the main floor near the MLK entrance, volunteers take the elevators on the near right up to the sixth floor. Please note that only one bank of elevators goes beyond the fifth floor.

Once on the sixth floor, volunteers check in with the visitation window with a photo ID and explain that they will work in the Jail Library. The attendant will either provide a token for the personal storage lockers or make arrangements to watch volunteers’ personal belongings. If volunteers bring materials (e.g., local newspapers) into the jail, a deputy will need to inspect them.

At this point, volunteers are buzzed through a series of three doors and enter the jail library off of the last hallway. Volunteers should prop the door of the library open while they are working.

Circulation schedule

The group’s goal is to circulate crates on one floor per week. This ensures that inmates get new books once every two weeks. In the library there is a volunteer log indicating which floor and wing receive books each week and the order of rotation among the four wings:

• 6th floor East: men’s cells
• 6th floor West: men’s cells
• 7th floor East: women’s cells
• 7th floor West: men’s cells

Making up Crates

The inmates will have a wide variety of reading levels and interests. The following set-up and suggestions should be taken into account whenever making up a crate.

Set-up

• Crates should have two rows of paperbacks with spines facing up--one on top of the other.
• Two rows of hardcover or oversized books should be included upright.
• The books should be packed fairly tightly. The crates are often sat on, so if the books are not packed tightly together, the books will be damaged.

Contents

• All crates should contain material representing a wide variety of subjects, genres, and reading levels.
• Books should be taken from the shelves rather than from old crates in order to provide inmates with new reading material as often as possible.
• Items for which there are waiting lists, e.g., Donald Goines or romantic poetry, are not packed into crates. Instead, they are delivered directly to those who have requested them. Experienced volunteers handle these requests and are willing to train new volunteers.
• Magazines and local newspapers should be added to the top of each crate.
• Crates should be lined up along the cell door wall after they have been packed.
• Finally, a slip of paper designating the crate’s desination is added to each crate, and the two deputies on that floor are told that the new book crates are ready for delivery. This step is crucial to ensure that the crates reach the inmates quickly. If necessary, volunteers can leave a note on the door as a reminder to the deputies.