Austin Public Library Honored for Work with Incarcerated Youths

Eric Oatman -- School Library Journal, 5/5/2005

The Texas Library Association has presented the Hotho & Company Literacy Award to the Austin Public Library for Second Chance Books, an innovative program that provides surplus books to young offenders being detained at a short-term residential facility in Austin. The annual award honors the Texas library that has done the most “to encourage and support the joy and benefits of reading.”

Begun in the fall of 2003, the Second Chance Books exposes young offenders in need of a second chance themselves to a pastime few of them knew existed. Age 10 to 17, the young offenders are detained at the Garner Betts Juvenile Justice Center until their cases are adjudicated, a process that takes anywhere from a day to six months. Thanks to Second Chance Books, the center has been enriched by a growing library of popular titles; bi-weekly book talks; guest appearances by storytellers, authors, and artists; and a system for registering the young people for free library cards they could use after their release. Visiting young-adult authors have included Walter Dean Myers and William Sleator.

The program’s overall goal is to encourage young offenders to substitute positive recreational activities for negative ones. By all reports, it is doing that. “The people at the detention center say there are fewer disciplinary problems because the kids are reading,” says Jeannette Larson, who as the Austin library’s youth services manager oversees the project.

Laura Rodriguez, case manager at Gardner-Betts, is one of those people. “Our kids are able to ‘escape’ while being detained by becoming engrossed in a story,” she reported to the library. “Some of our kids read three to five books during the average stay of nine days.”