Abstract
A pioneering survey of library and reading preferences of prisoners in the oldest Slovak male prison in the town Leopoldov was performed and historical details are also mentioned. The library contains more than 7000 books and more than half of the regular readers (>10 books/year) among prisoners appreciate the library's richness and genre richness. The gratifying finding was that 70% of respondents perceive books as a source of information and a form of self-education. Interestingly, the textbook of English language for self-education was 6th the most borrowed book in the Leopoldov Prison and this or other education books were among the ten most borrowed books in other prisons. Data on the library richness and use by inmates in 14 Slovak prisons were collected and showed a library size of 1080–8849 books with a theoretical average ratio of 7.88 books/inmate. The real exchange ratio was 6.86 books/reader. The most preferred genre was crime by domestic and foreign authors. The results are also compared with few available studies from other countries.
Introduction
Brief history of the prison and library in the Leopoldov
Fortress in the town Leopoldov (western Slovakia) was finally built in 1669 by the decision of Leopold I. (officially Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia) aimed at providing protection during Turkish invasions in the 17th century (Hladký et al., 2018). Almost 200 years later, it was modified to prison (1855). It is known from the archive documents that the prison had its own library in 1867 but on a limited scale due to the high cost of books and the relatively low reading literacy of the general population, including prisoners: it should be noted that the official languages in Slovakia at this time were Hungarian and German (as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). At that time, the prison library contained over 200 publications mainly in the field of school education (50) and religion (60), including several dozen calendars which also had an educational purpose in 19th century (Hladký, 2016). The Books were mainly provided as gifts by book publishers or booksellers. All of this information comes from the reports of Emil Tauffer (1845–1891) who served as director at Leopoldov Prison and is known as a modern prison reformer in other countries and contributed significantly to the development of libraries in several European prisons (Hladký et al., 2018). After the establishment of the Czechoslovak republic (in 1918), inmates could order educational books and magazines but the criterion of political or social “security” was monitored. In the year 1928, the library purchased more than 800 books resulting in a total of 1985 publications in at least 6 different languages (Hladký et al., 2018). A very detailed report from 1935 (Hladký et al., 2018) reveals that the prison library contained 3844 publications with a predominance of Hungarian books (964), educational and entertaining books in the Czech language (864), educational and entertaining books in the Slovak language (526), school textbooks in various languages (595), books in the German language (486), and also books in the Russian or Polish language (373). The same criterion of political or national “security”, as mentioned above, was also applied to the selection and even destruction of many books during the World War II (1939–1945) and later with the onset of communism in the Czechoslovakia (1948) occurred. Actually, the prison library contains over 7000 publications (the oldest book dates from 1966) and a brief description of its functioning is given in the Discussion section.
Brief survey of Slovak prisons
The total number of prisons and related facilities in the Slovak republic is 23 with 10555 inmates by the end of 2019. Of this number, 17 facilities are regular prisons providing incarceration and/or detention and 6 facilities are so-called open facilities with a minimum level of security. The number of prisoners involves 8221 men and 703 women (incarcerated) and 1631 persons in detention (GR ZVJS 2019; Hladký and Štefanková, 2019).
Role of prison libraries and their development
Prison is a secret environment and place for the common population, which is often associated with negative images and can be depressing for many prisoners (due to a variety of subjective or objective factors). Prisoners in Slovakia have a number of ways how to spend leisure time, e.g. watching TV, playing board games, exercising and others (aktuality.sk, 2020). Importantly, libraries and book reading are the preferred way of mental “escape” from the prison into the real world or world of fantasy. In Australia, prisoners spoke about using the library to escape from the crowded, noisy conditions in which they live and the aggressive behaviour they sometimes experience in their cellblocks (Garner, 2020a). Other reports also confirm that library users in prisons are strongly motivated to read and to visit libraries as a mean of spending time aimed at improving their well-being (Garner, 2020b). Extensive papers summarizing progress in the management, collections and development of prison libraries have been published for a number of countries including UK, Japan, Poland or Croatia for example (Bowe, 2011; Nakane and Noguchi, 2011; Šimunić et al., 2016; Zybert, 2011) and full details are available in the cited papers.
Use of libraries by prison inmates
Available information is the most common need in prisons (Eze, 2016). Despite the various formal and administrative problems of libraries in prisons, they also have an important role in rehabilitation and education of prisoners, as reported from Poland and summarized for other countries (Zybert, 2011). Unfortunately, information regarding library richness and reading preferences is relatively scarce, there are only a few recent reports on the reading preferences of prisoners in Sri Lanka (Chandani and Weerasooriya, 2020) and India (Amaravathi, 2019) or about prison library richness in Croatia, Turkey and Pakistan (Dilek-Kayaoglu and Demir, 2014; Hussain et al., 2019; Šimunić et al., 2016). All these works are mentioned in detail in the Discussion section.
The aim of the study
This pioneering Slovak survey was carried out in the oldest prison in Slovakia, which has a capacity of 1418 men. With over 7000 books in the prison library and the prison not fully occupied, it would mean more than 5 books per prisoner in each moment and therefore a relatively adequate supply for reading activities. These theoretical data were compared with real facts from the library (numbers of active readers and books borrowed). The richness of the library and its use by prisoners was therefore assessed by objective numerical values, while prisoners’ views were monitored through a written questionnaire. Other prisons in Slovakia were also asked to provide real data on the intensity of library use, which contributed to originality of this work in an international context. Knowing the reading preferences of prison inmates can help to improve the management of prison libraries in terms of the content and educational activities, along with offering information for their “life after prison”.
Methods
A detailed survey was carried out in the oldest Slovak prison located in the town Leopoldov. For security and legal reasons, in was not possible to conduct personal interviews. The survey was therefore realized in the form of written questionnaire with the permission of General Directorate of the Prison and Court Guard Service of the Slovak republic. Questions are mentioned directly in the figure/table heads. Almost all questions were open-ended so the respondents may freely express their opinions. In this library, the principle is that a prisoner can borrow two books for a maximum of four weeks, but can borrow additional books if he returns the previous two books to the library earlier: this means that a prisoner can borrow a minimum of 26 books per year. There are also other possibilities how prisoners can obtain books, as will be mentioned in the discussion. The prison library has more than 500 readers (meaning that they have used at least one book from the library during their entire imprisonment) and considering that one prisoner may borrow at least 26 books per year, prisoners who borrow >10 books per year were randomly approached to take part in a questionnaire survey in order to get as objective an opinion as possible about the library's book and genre richness. Most readers fall into the medium security level while maximum security prisoners read books rarely. Therefore, differentiation of results was not done with respect to security level. Questionnaires were distributed to 40 randomly selected prisoners with higher reading intensity who agreed to participate in the survey. Thus, the only limitation of the survey was the willingness of respondents to provide answers. We also asked them about their reading practice prior to incarceration. Individual replies were expressed as % from the total participants. Objective data (number and structure of books, number of borrowed books, the most read books) were provided by respective prison library staff(s).
Other Slovak prisons with various degrees of security and structure of inmates (including young and women inmates) were asked for data on the size of the library and its use by inmates, in order to assess the theoretical and real ratio of books per capita and per real reader of the given library.
Results and discussion
Attitudes toward books and reading in prison
In Leopoldov Prison, the time for reading books is strictly influenced by the rules due to other duties (e.g. about 70% of medium security prisoners can work manually for companies that have protected factories in the prison, and the others serve the internal needs of the prison, which allows them to have a regular income), so the time for leisure activities is about 3 h per working day. Despite the different ways of spending leisure time (e.g. physical exercise, watching TV, writing letters, etc.), reading books was identified as an “important” part of leisure activities by 60% of respondents and as “moderately important” by 40% of respondents. These data corroborate data from Brazil, which suggests that leisure activities, including reading, are important for the mental health of incarcerated people (dos Santos et al., 2017).
It was not surprising to find that more than 90% of respondents had read books prior to incarceration (Figure 1A), indicating that they had read at least a few books (but not on a regular basis) in previous years. This high positivity of responses is mainly influenced by the fact that primary and secondary education requires reading recommended books (both domestic and foreign authors) as part of literary education: in line with this assumption, some respondents gave the answer that they read especially during their adolescence. However, some respondents (10%) wrote in the questionnaire that they had not read any books before, which could be related to a lower level of education (e.g. incomplete primary or secondary education). Some respondents from the “no” group also indicated that the main reason for not reading before imprisonment was lack of time and that they used the internet and newspapers as a source of information and/or relaxation. Another question about reading intensity yielded the expected response that, given the limited activities in prison (compared to normal life), inmates read more in prison than they did before (60%, Figure 1B). Interestingly, few respondents provided reply that they had become “avid readers” in the prison, which could have been for a variety of reasons, as discussed below.
Answer to the question Did you read books before you were imprisoned? (A) and Do you read more in the prison? (B). Data are expressed as a % of the total number of respondents (n = 40).
Those respondents who read the same or fewer books than before incarceration may simply prefer other leisure activities. Subsequent question therefore focused on the reason for higher reading intensity and, as naturally expected, more than half (55%, Figure 2A) of respondents mentioned free time to read as the main reason (which also implies that other leisure activities are less important to them). Unfortunately, 35% of respondents did not provide specific response why they read more, suggesting that reading has no specific aim to them (this is also similar to 40% of “moderately important” reading for leisure activities as mentioned above). Other responses (such as reading for enthusiasm or studying national laws etc.) accounted for only 10% of the responses. A separate question therefore asked about the specific motivation for reading books (Figure 2B) and 70% of respondents identified books as a source of new information (including self-education) as the main reason. At the same time, several respondents provided more than one explanation, and therefore reading the books as “the escape from the prison reality” occurred in 50% of responses (Figure 2B), meaning that many inmates do not read only one type of book genre, as outlined below and in Table 1. Other responses (such as that book reading keeps fresh mind) accounted for only 15%. Some of the responses were very honest: for example, the statement “reading books soothes my aching soul” is quite heartbreaking and could suggest that reading books could help inmates in correcting their behaviour for future life. In line with our findings, report from Australia revealed that “escape from the reality” is probably common motivation to read the books in prisons around the world (Garner, 2020a). Also a survey in a large prison (over 2000 inmates) in India revealed that more than 45% of prisoners read the books for educational purposes (Amaravathi, 2019). Contrary to the claims made by Garner (2020a) that inmates in prison may use the library as a psychological escape from the prison reality (staying in a library that does not look like a prison cell), Leopoldov Prison (and other prisons in Slovakia) does not provide a library for reading (for space and security reasons) and prisoners read books in their cells. In some prisons, there are only occasional activities, such as a “reading club” with civil librarians. Half of the prisoners who participated in the survey read more than 10 books per year, while the other half read more than 20–30 books per year (Figure 3).
Answer to the questions If you read more in prison, what is the main reason? (A) and What is your motivation to read books? (B). Data are expressed as a % of the total number of respondents (n = 40). Some respondents provided more than one reply and therefore sum of % is higher than 100 in the graph B.
Answer to the question How many books do you read per year? Data are expressed as a % of the total number of respondents (n = 40).
Answer to the question Which genres do you prefer? Data are expressed as a % of the total number of respondents (n = 40). Some respondents provided more than one reply and therefore sum of % of three main categories (in bold) is higher than 100.
Genre preference was then tracked as a separate question. As expected, most inmates indicated more than one genre (Table 1). It was found that prisoners like to read various types of novels and especially crime fiction (30%), followed by romance or historical books (15%) and biographies (15%), which can simply be attributed to leisure time. In line with these findings, report from the United Kingdom revealed that prison inmates like to read prison memoirs or crime fiction, but, surprisingly, they also like history and romance, which could bring “some colour into their lives” (The Guardian 2010). Surprisingly, 25% of inmates also preferred science textbooks and several responses indicated that self-education was an important motivation for reading, for example, science/technical books (science, physics, and health) were mentioned as preferred. Also in Malawi, health, educational and spiritual information are the main information needs of prisoners (Gama et al., 2020). A survey in the Welikada Prison Library (Sri Lanka) indicated that the usage of information resources includes mainly religious, health, financial or legal materials (61.2–63.8%), news (52.5%), stories (40%) and general knowledge (37.5%) as reported by Chandani and Weerasooriya (2020). Long-term prisoners in Pakistan prefer novels and law-related books (Hussain et al., 2019). It has been suggested that specific literature could help prisoners find careers after prison and prepare them, at least in part, for “life after prison” (Chandani and Weerasooriya, 2020). In line with this, data from the USA reveal that the primary role of prison libraries is recreational reading, but the challenge is also to maintain contact with the outside world to enable a return to the community (Conrad, 2012).
The prison library is situated in a separate building as a part of an education centre at the facility. Actually, the prison library contains over 7000 publications falling mainly into the categories of novels (historic, romantic or crime literature, sci-fi) and poetry (5159 books), factual literature (textbooks and books on nature, science, healthcare, technique and law, biography, sport or encyclopedias, 1370 books), religious, motivation or philosophy/psychology literature (252 books) and books in/about foreign languages (277). This spectrum is similar to other European countries such as Croatia (Šimunić et al., 2016). Access to national law documents in a specialized reading room is also provided by means of electronic (computer) devices. It should also be noted that the library excluded over 8000 books in the year 2016 (multiple copies of the same book, outdated or old-fashioned books such as titles related to the communist regime) so the original library size was over 15 000 books a few years ago. Data from the year 2019 showed that the library provided 2928 book publications to prison inmates mainly in the categories of novels (2106 books) and factual literature/textbooks (822), as well as 232 accesses to national law documents. For comparison, archive documents revealed an interesting finding that total number of books borrowed in the year 1928 in this prison was over 13 000 (Hladký et al., 2018), indicating that prisoners almost 100 years later have also other leisure activities and therefore read less. Actually, the ten most read books include mainly crime fiction by authors such as Jo Nesbø (Marekors), the Slovak crime author Dominik Dán (You Only Live Twice), Michael Connelly (Angels Flight, Lost Light, The Narrows and The Gods of Guilt), Mario Puzo (The Godfather and Omertà), Dan Brown (Deception Point). Interestingly, textbook of English language for self-education was 6th the most borrowed book in the prison library. At that time, the number of readers was 585 (each reader is registered when he borrows at least one book) falling mainly into the medium level of security, indicating ca. 5 books borrowed per prisoner per year. Data allowing such comparison with other countries are rare and are mentioned below (see next chapter).
In terms of organization, medium security inmates may personally borrow books (previously selected from the catalogue) from the library accompanied by a member of the prison guard while maximum security prisoners receive the books directly in their cells based on the previous orders from the library catalogue. Unlike Slovakia, prisoners in Pakistan are not allowed to have books in their barracks (Hussain et al., 2019). Registry of library use at Leopoldov Prison is performed both manually and via an electronic system but this is not common in other Slovak prison libraries, where manual registry dominates. Also report from Poland indicates that inmates often select books from the library list in their cells (Zybert, 2011) and report from Turkey states that “inmates and detainees are not allowed to enter the libraries” (Dilek-Kayaoglu and Demir, 2014). The staff member in the library is a selected prison inmate with prerequisites for this type of work who works closely with staff members responsible for education and leisure activities (university degree). In agreement, it is not common in other countries such as UK or Japan that professional librarian is employed as reported by Bowe (2011) or Nakane and Noguchi (2011). A recent report from Croatia indicated that 75% of libraries in correctional facilities are managed mainly by prison officers or by inmates (Šimunić et al., 2016).
Subsequently, subjective opinions of inmates concerning the library and genre richness have been analysed and 55–65% of respondents appreciated both these factors as sufficient (Figure 4). In contrast to present data, prison inmates in Nigeria found library conditions inadequate (85–95%) due to poor funding of the library or building used for library (Sambo et al., 2017) and another study from Nigeria reported that over 80% of prison inmates claimed that they do not have free access to the prison library resources (Busayo and Elaturoti, 2016). Since 25–35% of respondents provided a negative reply regarding library and genre richness, we asked them for an explanation outlining which books they miss. The provided genres varied but were rather low (10–20%) considering that individual respondents often mentioned more than one genre (Table 2). However, 20% of respondents indicated a desire for encyclopedias to be included which could considerably affect self-education and it will be the information for prison's directory to consider this need in the future. Surprisingly, 25% of respondents mentioned that they miss new books (Table 2), but it should be noted that some of them stated the opposite, i.e. they “very appreciate new book titles in the library”. In line with this fact, the gift of private persons and publishers in 2016 brought over 900 new books into the prison library. Only a small budget of ca. 6000 € is used annually to buy the books at the statewide level. Donation is the main source of library enlargement also in other countries as recently reported in Croatia (Šimunić et al., 2016). On the other hand, inmates may ask their families to bring them books and may also buy books from on-line publishers (if their financial sources from the manual work as mentioned above are sufficient). All respondents replied that their access to books was not restricted. In line with this management, Japanese incarcerated persons have the opportunity to obtain personal books, magazines, and newspapers through purchase or as gifts since available reading materials in correctional facilities are inadequate and do not meet the needs of the prisoners (Nakane and Noguchi, 2011). It should be noted that all external books are checked from a security standpoint by the specialized staff, but it terms of the content, books advocating suppression of human rights and freedoms or containing pornography and antisocial or violent content are prohibited. The same rules apply in many other countries including Poland (Zybert, 2011).
Answer to the questions Do you think the prison library is rich enough? and Do you think all literary genres are available in the prison library? Data are expressed as a % of the total number of respondents (n = 40).
Answer to the question What literary genres are missing from the prison library? Data are expressed as a % of the total number of respondents (n = 40). Some respondents provided more than one answer and therefore sum of % is higher than 100.
A survey in 14 prisons in Slovakia revealed 1080–8849 books per prison library. Over 70% of libraries contained more than 2500 books (Table 3), whereas it was only half of prison libraries in Turkey which contained more than 2500 books (Dilek-Kayaoglu and Demir, 2014). Using publicly available data on the maximum capacity of individual prisons and considering that Slovak prisons are currently at 93% of their capacity, we can make theoretical calculations about the number of books per capita that are presumably close to reality. These data indicate a wide interval of 3.54–25.9 books per prisoner in individual prisons as shown in Table 3. The average ratio from the available analysed libraries (the number of all books/max. capacity of all inmates, i.e. 64 853 books/8228 inmates) is 7.88. General recommendations are over 10 books per person and such values (close to or over 10) were identified in 8 out of 14 prisons (i.e. almost 60%). For comparison, prisons in Croatia have library sizes of 450–6122 but per capita availability was not monitored (Šimunić et al., 2016): however, an older report from Croatia indicated 1.9–40 books per prisoner (Horvat and Nebesny, 2004). If identified correctly, an analysed prison in Pakistan has 1100–1700 books and 1053 inmates, implying only one book per capita (Hussain et al., 2019) and survey from India reported that prison library contains 4000 items (books and newspapers/magazines) for 2200 prisoners, leading to ca. two library items per prisoner (Amaravathi, 2019). A calculation from Turkey revealed ca. 5 book titles per prisoner if all books and all prisoners were pooled (Dilek-Kayaoglu and Demir, 2014), which is similar to several Slovak prisons (Table 3). It is assumed that such amount could be sufficient if books are actual/interesting and if the library collection is continually improved.
Survey on the size and use of libraries in selected prisons in Slovakia with data from 2019. The values “theoretical number of books per inmate” and “real number of books per reader” are derived from the data in the previous two columns (e.g. number of book borrowed/number of readers = real number of books borrowed per prisoner in a given year). Prisons are listed based on the number of books in the library. Maximum prison capacities are based on the official reports (e. g. Hladký and Štefanková, 2019).
Survey on the size and use of libraries in selected prisons in Slovakia with data from 2019. The values “theoretical number of books per inmate” and “real number of books per reader” are derived from the data in the previous two columns (e.g. number of book borrowed/number of readers = real number of books borrowed per prisoner in a given year). Prisons are listed based on the number of books in the library. Maximum prison capacities are based on the official reports (e. g. Hladký and Štefanková, 2019).
* indicates prison for young inmates (14–18 years old); ** the data on maximum prison capacity and number of active readers are almost the same, indicating probable error in the evidence of active readers (then ratio of books per reader would be higher); *** indicates women prison; **** indicates so-called open facilities with the minimum level of security.
Of course, the theoretical per capita value (the number of books/number of inmates) represents only numerical information and thus real library use by prison inmates is more interesting. For this reason, we requested Slovak prisons to provide data on the number of active readers and the number of books borrowed in 2019. Then, the objective ratio (number of borrowed books/number of readers) was within the interval of 3.77–17.9 in individual prisons (Table 3). The average ratio from all analysed libraries (total number of all borrowed books/number of all readers, i.e. 35 995 borrowed books/5243 readers) is 6.86. A comparison between theoretical and real use ratio revealed that 7 prisons are below but other 7 prisons are above this ratio (Table 3) and no correlation was observed between these parameters. A possible explanation is, as noted in the footnote of Table 3, that some prisons have overestimated ratio of active readers due to the simple fact that their library registry operates in a manual mode and prisoners whose incarceration has been terminated still have a library membership (and this could be the probable reason for the low real ratio of 2.46 books per reader observed in Ilava Prison). It is therefore recommended that an electronic library registry would be suitable in all prisons and this would provide more accurate data. However, data from the Leopoldov Prison where the registry was manually verified and active readers are real persons indicate a similar theoretical and practical ratio of books per inmate or reader (4.98 vs. 5.00), and similar values were observed for several other prisons (Table 3). Another noteworthy finding was that young prisoners (Sučany Prison) read more (17.9) than what the theoretical ratio is (12.6), which could be encouraging in regard to their future lives. Even more surprisingly, women (Nitra-Chrenová Prison) do not read more (6.00 vs. 9.35). Overall, Prešov Prison revealed the lowest ratio of books per inmate (3.54) and the verification of the library collection is recommended.
Another useful parameter that can be deducted from the available data, is the number of active readers out of the total inmates: considering that prisons are actually at 93% of their capacities and that the number of active readers is constantly updated, the final % is close to reality. Just in the Leopoldov Prison, where these data were manually verified, the number of active readers is over 40% (585 active readers out of the maximum prison capacity 1418 inmates) and values over 40% (i.e. 55–86%) were recorded in most prisons (calculable from Table 3). However, we note that some high values such as 99% of active readers out of the total prisoners in Ilava Prison (852 vs. 858 persons) may be due to non-updated registry as mentioned above: on the other hand, given prison houses inmates with long-term or life sentences and thus inmates change only slightly over time and they are likely to use the library at least occasionally. Similarly, data from Croatia indicate that libraries in ca. half of the correctional facilities are used by up to 50% or more prisoners, which is much more than 10–12% in the common population (Šimunić et al., 2016).
As in the case of Leopoldov Prison, survey of the most read books in other prisons confirmed that the most preferred genre is crime literature, especially books by a Slovak crime author writing under the pseudonym Dominik Dán (he/she wrote more than 30 books with unknown real/fictional motivation of the stories), followed by foreign authors such as Jo Nesbø, Michael Connelly or Bernard Minier in the women's prison as well. Books written by Dan Brown are also preferred. Among the young prisoners (Sučany Prison), books by Dominik Dán and novels by Robin Cook, Pino Arlacchi or Bernard Clavel are preferred. Interestingly, classic literature occurs among the top 10 most borrowed books in many prisons (e.g. Dante Alighieri/The Divine Comedy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe/The Sorrows of Young Werther, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn/The Gulag Archipelago, and Joseph Heller/Catch 22) as well as education books (English or German language for self-education, dictionary of foreign words, human anatomy, Atlas of the World).
It was found that the prison library in the oldest Slovak prison in Leopoldov contains more than 7000 books and that more than half of the intensive readers (>10 books per year) within the prisoners appreciate the richness of books and genres. The higher intensity of reading during imprisonment is merely a reflection of modified time management (compared to normal life outside prison) and a form of relaxation, which has also been observed through the most read books in other Slovak prisons. On the other hand, it was a pleasing finding that more than half of the respondents perceived books as a source of information and a form of self-education. Further research should focus on the reading preferences of Slovak prisoners with regard to motivation and education aimed at preparing possible specialized courses to increase their knowledge and/or skills for “life after prison”. In this context, electro-technical education (at the level of high school) has a long-term tradition in the Leopoldov Prison but further courses could increase the chances of finding a job in the later life. The detailed comparison of the library size per capita and the actual library use per reader is presented here as an original aspect and can serve to improve the libraries of some Slovak prisons. It is recommended that the opinion of inmates be taken into account when purchasing new book titles. The exchange of books between libraries on the basis of a nationwide register of prison libraries could also improve the availability of books as a source of information for prisoners (especially specialized books which are not frequently used in individual libraries and/or are not available in numerous copies).
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The questionnaire survey was carried out with the permission and help of General Directorate of the Prison and Court Guard Service of the Slovak republic. The author would like to thank MSc Jana Štefanková and MSc Monika Moravčíková for their help in conducting the survey and for providing data on the library of Leopoldov Prison and to all the prisons for kindly providing data on the book collection and use of books in their libraries. Special thanks to Dr Jozef Kováčik (
) for critical reading and English polishing.
Disclosure statement
The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest
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The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.