• Andrea Kelton-Harris - Senior Human Resources Consultant at Harvard, First Lady at Zion Union Church in Hyannis, MA 
• Nancy Cline - Head Librarian of Harvard College.   
• Steven Kadish - Director of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham & Women's Hospital.  
• David Murphy - CEO - Better World Books  
• Hampton Howard - NH public defender  
• Carl MacDonald - City Mission Society  
• Bruce Western - Professor of Sociology and Director of the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
• Randall Kennedy - Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard University.

1. We share a church basement with some pretty famous people - John Adams, John Quincy Adams and their wives are interred in crypts about 20 feet away from our book room. 
2. We have over 4600 books in our book room - if piled on top of each other, they would be over 30 stories high. 
3. We have a collection of "wacky cat books" in our library.  Some favorites include "The Cat Cookbook," "The Meow Te Ching" and a book of kitty personal ads. 
4. One of the funniest books that was ever donated to us was "Children's Letters to Spiro Agnew." 
5. We are affiliated with the Lucy Parsons Bookstore
6. Lucy Parsons was a labor organizer in Chicago
7. Despite having died in 1942, Lucy still gets marriage proposals and love letters from prisoners. 
8. For $25, you can fund a GED study guide and dictionary that will allow one prisoner to receive a GED. 
9. Our "We the People" legal primer was authored by an ex-offender who just showed up with a finished copy one day. 
10. Our logo was designed by two inmates at the Souza-Baranowski State Prison in Shirley, MA.  They also came up with the tagline "Books can open doors." 
11. Our National Prisoner Resource List has been around for 21 years.  Recently a sight-impaired volunteer created the large-print version. 
12. Dictionaries are by far our most requested book. 
13. We love it when volunteers take it upon themselves to improve the way we do things at PBP. 
14. We really would love for someone to donate several laptops. 
15. With a small but dedicated group of volunteers, PBP is able to ship out over 15,000 books each year.
16. Unlike other non-profit organizations, PBP has no paid staff so all of the work is done by our volunteers.
17. PBP is one of the oldest "free books to prisoners" programs in the country; there are approximately 15-20 other programs across the country.
18. PBP is 35 years old.
19. Our favorite donations are paperback non-fiction titles.
20. We hold a book drive each fall with City Mission Society of Boston and Better World Books.  We have collected 20,000 book donations in each of the last two years. 
21. Our 2009 book drive is scheduled for Saturday October 3.
22. 43% of inmates did not have a high school diploma or GED. *  (Dept of Justice statistics)
23. Based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males *
24. Thirty-one percent of jail inmates had grown up with a parent or guardian who abused alcohol or drugs.  About 12 percent had lived in a foster home or institution. Forty-six percent had a family member who had been incarcerated *
25. Since 1990, several studies have shown that prisoners who attend educational programs while they are incarcerated are less likely to return to prison following their release

* According to US Bureau of Justice Statistics

Prisoner Resources 

Come Volunteer With Us!