We only send books to prisoners in prison in Canada.
If a prisoner is on parole and living in a private residence, they can get a library card.
In some prisons the Librarian or Program Director will contact us. They can reach us via email with any requests that they may have. It should be noted that we are more likely to be able to send genres of books rather than actual titles.
Prisoners requesting books can write us at the following address:
Books to Prisoners
P.O. Box 78005
1755 East Broadway
Vancouver, BC V5N 5W1
Provincial Prisons
If the prisoner is incarcerated in a provincial prison they should ask prison authorities or their librarian if the prison accepts books from Books to Prisoners. Some provincial prisons in Ontario only accept books directly from Amazon and the books must be preapproved by the prison officials. However, Books to Prisoners regularly sends books to provincial prisons in British Columbia. Receiving books from us depends in which province you live in and what the rules are for the specific provincial prison.
Federal Prisons
If the prisoner is from a federal prison that we have had contact with in the past, we may be able to send them books. However, if the contact with the said prison was made many years back, then we would first have to reconnect with the prison authorities.
Some prisons have not had prior contact from our organization and so we would first have to reach out to those prison authorities in regards to donations from our group.
Please Note
We can only send books to prisoners in prisons with which we currently have contact. Prisoners can write us asking for genres/subjects or specific authors/titles. However, most times we don’t have specific titles and must substitute with a book that is similar (same genre or different book by same author).
In Canada, prisoners do not have access to the Internet. As a result, mostly family and friends of prisoners will pass on our information to their incarcerated loved ones. If any family and friends would like more information, they can email us.
We only take requests for books directly from prisoners, not their family or friends. This is because of the rules set out by prison authorities. Prisoners must write us with their requests.
Books to Prisoners Vancouver 