By Sheena McFarland
The Salt Lake Tribune
DRAPER, Utah — Whether it’s the ins and outs of 19th-century agricultural practices or getting swept up in a time-traveling romantic yarn, Mindy Scheer just can’t get enough.
But getting lost in the world of books hasn’t always been a habit of the 30-year-old.
Before her October incarceration at Utah State Prison for attempted theft, Scheer had read maybe one full book. Now she’s keeping a list: 47 and counting.
“It’s like being in therapy here - it’s just so nice and quiet,” said Scheer, who is now a paid worker in the library. “There’s just so much out there to learn about.”
The prison’s library system serves as a respite from daily prison life, but it also delivers a way for Scheer and more than 3,000 inmates to learn more about their addictions, develop their skills and overcome trials in their lives.
Men and women in the prison’s drug-treatment programs usually walk out of their weekly visits to the library with five books - the maximum amount they are allowed to check out at once - most of which focus on beating an addiction, stopping the cycle of child abuse or losing weight.
Laura Mosley, 36, focuses pretty heavily on the self-help and “real stuff” books out there. As part of her treatment program, she has to give seminars about topics ranging from addiction to depression, and the library provides her with the knowledge she needs to teach on those topics.
“I hit the book limit every week,” said Mosley, who is serving time for drug dealing.
On the men’s side of the prison, the story is much the same. The self-help section is large, and so is the nonfiction area, where inmates can check out books for school as they work toward their high-school equivalency diplomas.
Shane Patterson, who volunteers at the library every chance he can get, looks at the library as an opportunity to better himself.
“This is kind of a unique privilege to be given such an opportunity,” the 33-year-old said. “We can immerse ourselves in the criminal activity or immerse ourselves in school and finding out who we are.”
Patterson, who is serving six years to life for sodomy of a child, has chosen the latter.
He has written several companies to send learning manuals on industrial subjects, such as steam turbines or diesel mechanics. He also wrote Donald Trump after reading his books.
“He inspired me to not be afraid to think big,” he said. “Once you become an inmate, you kind of have beaten-dog syndrome. But just because we wear this jumpsuit doesn’t mean we’re rabid.”
The nonfiction books at the library have helped him and his fellow inmates prepare to re-enter the outside world as smoothly as possible, he said.
And library workers and volunteers are able to use the work skills they gain there and apply them outside prison. Andrew Hansen, 47, spends between 40 and 60 hours a month performing the equivalent of CPR on nearly dead books. Hansen, who was trained as a carpenter and is incarcerated for manslaughter and robbery, now uses his woodworking skills on paper. He makes new covers out of used manila folders or corrugated cardboard, and does his best to reinforce the spines of books to keep pages from falling out.
His work can double the shelf life of an often-used book, said Sgt. Heather Brady, one of two librarians who run the five libraries at the Draper prison. “The average book lasts in good condition for about six months,” Brady said. “But Andy does a fantastic job. He can get another three to six months out of them.”
Library director Officer Christie Jensen, who sees the prison library as a “unique opportunity to do all levels of librarianship,” gets requests for books regularly. The only time she’ll say no is when she gets requests for books with old English type, which are used to design gang tattoos. But plenty of other picture books get checked out to use as inspiration for some new ink. And while there are some easy-reader and Spanish selections, most of the fiction books checked out are the ones found lining the shelves at any other library.
True crime novels of wide appeal, by best-selling authors such as James Patterson and Janet Evanovich, are popular in the library, too. In one of the men’s library facilities, the Twilight Saga novels by Stephenie Meyer are behind the counter so a library worker can better control how often they’re checked out, because there’s always such a high demand for them. Romance novels have wide appeal among female inmates, while science fiction appeals more to the men, Jensen said. The only books that don’t get checked out are those that look too fancy or old and worn out.
“They’re either scared they’re going to hurt the book or they have the attitude that if it’s old, it’s useless,” Jensen said.
The prison libraries are dependent on private donations for their books. Corrections officers often will drop off books they have finished, and Eagle Scouts and college students will organize book drives to drop off as many as 1,200 books at a time.
“This library really is a reflection of the community because all the books come from the community,” Brady said. “It’s a pretty eclectic collection we have.”