Into a book and out of prison
A novel way to reduce prison populations
Inmates in Brazil get the chance to read their way to freedom
from The Folio Society Newsletter, Issue 7, 2012
In an unusual move, Brazil’s prison authorities recently announced that inmates in the country’s overcrowded prisons will be offered reduced sentences in exchange for reading a good book.
If a prisoner agrees to read 12 books, one every four weeks, whilst serving time, they will have up to 48 days cut from their sentences each year. The books must be works of literature, philosophy, science or classics and the prisoners will be required to write a short essay on each book they finish, ‘making correct use of paragraphs’ and in legible joined-up writing. The program called ‘Redemption through Reading’ will be trialled in some of the country’s most notorious prisons and is part of an ongoing effort to reduce the prison population, the fourth largest in the world.
The scheme has been praised across the world as recognising the importance of reading – a cause close to our hearts at Folio. As Nobel Laureate (and former political prisoner) Joseph Brodsky once said, ‘There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them’.
Thanks to Akyat Bahay Gangster for the alert.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 28th, 2012 at 10:35
Amazing!
July 30th, 2012 at 08:28
I think this is a great idea, and I wouldn’t mind it being implemented here in the Philippines and elsewhere as well.
I do think there should be exceptions to the program, though. Perpetrators of particularly heinous crimes (massacres, rape/slays, etc.) or those who are classified as truly dangerous sociopaths by doctors (although I suppose most of such folks should be in mental institutions, probably)…
… should not be included in the program – in deference to their victims / victims’ families and in the name of public safety as well. Just my thoughts.
Otherwise, I think it’s a good idea in a world where we have started to be woefully lacking in knowledge-imbibing through reading.