Release Address Information
Working in a prison library one of the demands on our time is the requests for information about release addresses. As each inmate must have a confirmed and acceptable address to release to and their time gets near it is a major concern. However, it is only recently that we have been providing a much more extensive aspect of this service. We know have forms that can be filled out and then we do a computer search on a database using the criteria that is listed by the inmate. This is a very useful and vital service, but sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed when I have to answer 3 of them for the Seattle area. As Seattle is a large area and has many services that can be found and therefore printed for the inmate, the requests can be quite time consuming. However, it does feel good when we get postive feedback from the inmates telling us that the information we provided was the reason they will be able to be released on time. So even though it may take up time to search out this information it is an important aspect of our work.