Prizon Support Zines

Prisoner support encompasses a variety of activities aimed a providing assistance to prisoners. There are a variety of ways to support prisoners: letter writing, visitations if possible, providing financial support, and, here in Monroe County, donating books for the jail library.

The Monroe County Public Library visits the county jail multiple times throughout the week, and circulates over 1,000 books a month to around 200 inmates. Each inmate has access to the library around once every three weeks.

Here are some related zines available at the Downtown Library.

 

Behavior Modification by Jason Robb

SuperMax

Written and beautifully illustrated by an inmate on death row in the Ohio SuperMax system, Behavior Modification is a zine that provides an inside look at the conditions and reality that he faces every day he spends in prison. He reflects on how systems of control are used to modify prisoner behavior.

 

What is Prisoner Support? A Collection of Original Writings from Political Prisoners on Prisoner Support and Solidarity

What This is a Picture Of

The zine is a compilation of political prisoner statements and letters. Many of these correspondences include accounts of why the prisoner is incarcerated and some of the daily struggles they are facing. Prisoners speak on their ideals and how to enact change within the world even as they remain behind bars. They also detail various ways others can support incarcerated individuals - including possible visitation and letter writing tips.

 

An Interview Of A Caged Rose by Leon Benson

What This is a Picture Of

Artistic rewritings and retellings of Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet and the violence surrounding them, as told through an interview by Indiana inmate Leon Benson.

 

Celling Black Bodies: Black Women in the Global Prison Industrial Complex by Julia Sudbury

What This is a Picture Of

This zine details how black women are being criminalized and caught up in the expanding network of penal repression. It gives direct statistics of women imprisoned, the history and emergence of the prison industrial complex, and personal examples of the negative impact this is having on many lives.

 

Prison Abolition by Yves Bourque

What This is a Picture Of

Bourque details how prisons are inhumane at their very root. He states that society will continue to destroy itself if the present general ideology about our criminal “justice” and prison system is allowed to remain. Using this logic, and the gross injustice done to prisoners, Bourque calls for the total abolition of the prison system.

 

Black People’s Prison Survival Guide by Abdullah Ibraheem

What This is a Picture Of

Ibraheem details, in various parts, America’s penal history, past and present victims, spiritual and mental health, and how time is utilized in prison. As a prisoner for over 15 years in the Ohio prisons, Ibraheem is familiar with the penal system firsthand. This book was meant to safeguard individuals in their mental, physical, and spiritual well-being while in prison.