From Yale To Jail For Local Librarian

By Nancy K. Crevier

Early every weekday morning, Newtown resident Mark Aldrich walks 2½ miles from his home in the center of own to his place of work, crossing over a field and stepping briskly up a tree-line road. The walk, he said, puts him in a good frame of mind, an especially important way to start the day when the first glimpse of the building where he will spend his day is of a sprawling brick structure surrounded by tall fences and coils of razor and barbed wire.

Mr Aldrich is the Garner Correctional Institution librarian, and from the moment he steps through the heavy front doors, his work day is a juxtaposition of the normal alongside the atypical.

He has served as the head librarian at Garner Library since 1996. Prior to that, he worked in the cataloguing department at Yale University until returning to Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) for his teaching degree. An English major, writer and artist, Mr Aldrich had also served as a volunteer directing community mural programs.

“I find that I tend to be able to help people who are having a hard time,” said Mr Aldrich, who believes it is this aspect of his personality that led an instructor at SCSU to suggest he look into teaching at prison sites. “I interviewed at a couple and was told that having a library media specialist degree would be helpful, so I went back, got that degree, and when the position opened at Garner, I accepted the  offer for this job,” Mr Aldrich said.

It is not a decision that he regrets. Seven weeks of training comparable to that of a security officer before starting his position prepared him for the rigors of operating in a high security prison.

“There is a lot to keep track of,” he said, what with prisoners’ statuses changing, planned and unexpected lockdowns, new inmates coming into the system, and some troubled personalities that must be balanced. Mr Aldrich has undergone training in mental health as well, and is able to practice more patience with those acutely mentally ill prisoners who visit the library under escort. He appreciates the importance of a good rapport with both the officers at Garner and the prison population that comes and goes through the library every day.

“The big leap for me,” said Mr Aldrich, “was being in charge of my own library.”

He feels at ease, despite starting his day by passing through a metal detector and a series of heavy doors that thud decisively shut behind him in “sally ports,” where the opposite door cannot be opened until the other is locked, and immediately attaching a body alarm and testing it once he arrives at his desk. Only then does he boot up the three work computers in the room and begin what seems more like a workday on the “outside.”

The Garner Library, taken out of context, looks like a library in a small elementary school. Low bookcases line the perimeter of the room beneath colorful murals, the art of inmates working under Mr Aldrich’s direction one of the first years he worked at the prison. A few more bookcases fill the center of the room, along with tables where inmates can sit quietly and read or study. His desk is positioned near the door where he can monitor who comes in and who goes out, and keep an eye on those in the library and those in the adjacent work areas. Normally, five or six inmates serve on his workforce and will be in the center at various times throughout the day.

The thousands of classics, fiction and non-fiction books are comparable to what would be found in a public library, said Mr Aldrich, with a few caveats. Overly violent, “How to” books, or suggestive books are not part of the library collection, for instance.

“We have a list of books from a review committee that are banned. They are books that are considered a threat to the good order of the population because of the content. Our primary goal is always safety and security,” he said. The same goes for magazines.

Like the general population, the prison inmates have varied reading interests, and within the restrictions, Mr Aldrich tries to provide material for all tastes. Current fiction writers like Janet Evanovich and Scott Westerfield are found right alongside heady authors like Proust, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Kipling, Twain, and Emerson. Magazine selections include The Economist, Christian Science Monitor Magazine and Sports Illustrated. Mr Aldrich strives to mimic, as much as possible, a public library.

“Vampire books are big this year,” Mr Aldrich said, with the Twilight series as popular at Garner as at any public library. “Harry Potter is still a big draw, and Lord of the Rings is always popular,” he said. A few select inmates are reading the classics, and Mr Aldrich even picked up at copy of Ulysses online for a former Irish gang member who wanted to read the James Joyce epic novel.

Surprisingly, poetry books are also popular with prison library patrons, many of whom, said Mr Aldrich, glean lines from poems to include in letters to loved ones. Why maximum security prisoners, many of whom suffer from mental illness or who have committed horrific crimes, gravitate to love poems and classic novels is a mystery to Mr Aldrich, but he is happy to accommodate those desires.

Providing quality reading material is important to the education of the inmates, he said. A good portion of those imprisoned do try to better themselves during incarceration.

“The most challenging part of my job is self-imposed,” Mr Aldrich said. “I want to get the guys to be serious. Some of them will return to society and I want them to read the classics and come to study groups, and help them prepare for the outside.”

A Teacher’s Instincts

The Unified School District #1 provides schooling within Garner, but Mr Aldrich’s position as prison librarian, much as that of a public librarian’s, is also to provide interesting and educational programs. The Garner programs, though, tend to have a more serious bent than those public programs offered on the outside. “One of the most important programs that I have here is the 211 System,” said Mr Aldrich. The 211 System provides prisoners with information about halfway houses, counseling, and other resources that can assist them when they are released from Garner.

His College Assistance Program provides an English grammar class twice a week for inmates interested in taking the CLEP exam for college credits. Another afternoon, inmates can take part in an algebra class in the library. The Playwrighting/Performance class provides an outlet for creative writing and acting, and occasionally an outside author is invited to speak. Another writing class has been focused on creating a “dummy” newspaper to be presented to the administration in hopes that the Garner Gazette can become a regular publication. This class, Mr Aldrich said, also focuses on learning the craft of writing.

On the lighter side, a Movie Club has recently been formed, thanks to the donation by Mr Aldrich of his private collection of hundreds of VHS movies. He has encouraged one inmate who possesses a great deal of knowledge about movies of all genres to write movie reviews. The many classic movies in the collection have proved appropriate and popular, as have the Star Wars movies and other fantasies. Generally, R rated movies are not allowed.

“You have to have a teacher’s instincts for this job, I think,” said Mr Aldrich. “I find myself drawing on my own education. It’s a joy to get them excited about a book that I read as a student at UCLA. It makes me proud when people from the outside see that these guys can be good and have potential,” he said, while admitting that not all of the prisoners fall into that category. It is hard, he said, to see some of the inmates who “just can’t win.”

Andrius Banevicius, public information officer for the Department of Correction Office of External Affairs, commented on Mr Aldrich’s contributions as librarian at Garner Correctional Institution.

“For prisoners, the library is not just a place to come. Mr Aldrich has made it a place where they are thinking toward the future, and that’s important. The vast majority [of the inmates] will return to society, so any education they can get will be useful,” said Mr Banevicius.

Recent funding cuts mean that the Garner Library is dependent on donations to build the collections. Mr Aldrich is particularly grateful to the generosity of the Friends of the C.H. Booth Library, which each summer allows him to select from the volumes offered at the annual Book Sale.

More of the prison population comes in for enjoyment than for reference, said Mr Aldrich, although he assists many in school work and the library serves as a source of legal information for others. As many as 30 inmates at a time may be under his watchful eye in the library center, he said, but because the inmates by and large grasp the significance of the privilege of being there and appreciate his help, he has rarely encountered trouble. Only once in 13 years has he ever hit his body alarm for assistance, and even then the antagonism was directed at others, not himself, he said. Security risk groups are identified and prisoners with opposing gang affiliations, for example, are not using the library at the same time. Each cell block has a designated time and day that the prisoners can receive library passes, and it is always at Mr Aldrich’s discretion as to whether or not an inmate is allowed to visit.

A public or school librarian can forge relationships with his or her patrons, but Mr Aldrich must always keep in mind that he is working with inmates in a maximum security prison.

“I don’t want to ever cross the line. There have to be boundaries. I give them respect when they give me respect, and it works out,” he said. “You do have to have a sense of humor, too, working here,” said Mr Aldrich.

There is a sense of order to the atmosphere at his job, possibly more so than some on the “outside” encounter at work, mused Mr Aldrich. It is an extension of the frame of mind he puts in place walking up Nunnawauk Road at daybreak.

“The job,” he said, “has evolved into something quite pleasant.”