Books of all kinds fill every corner of a small attic room in the U-District, where volunteers like Luke Bishop, a UW junior, spend two evenings a week working for the Books to Prisoners program, packing and mailing books to inmates in prisons throughout the country.

“I just started this quarter as part of one of the classes I’m doing,” he said. “You open up these letters and read, ‘I’m in solitary confinement 23 hours a day; I like these kinds of books.’ When you get these letters, you can really sense the kind of isolation they feel.”

Since its creation in the early 1970s, Books to Prisoners has answered thousands of letters from inmates each year. In 2009, the organization had its busiest year ever, receiving 12,000 requests for books — a jump from 10,000 the previous year — all of which were answered by volunteers.

“It’s about serving a need, essentially: Some prisons will have prison libraries, and some prisons don’t have a prison library beyond perhaps a legal library,” said Andy Chan, president of Books to Prisoners.

In the spring of 2008, Books to Prisoners relocated to the University District, partly to attract more college-age volunteers. During most of its existence, the program has relied on the hospitality of donors for its workspace, mainly due to a very small budget of only $25,000 a year. They spent several years located in a basement and spare rooms in houses before finding their current location at a rented room in a local church.

“We figured it would be a great place to be, [with] much greater access to UW students,” Chan said. “It’s actually been a really big difference. We’ve had not only volunteers through the service-learning program at the Carlson Center, but [also] sororities and honor societies.”

Volunteers come to the program from all walks of life and all corners of the city. Some have humanitarian or religious motivations, Chan explained, while others believe in prison rehabilitation. Some are simply trying to fulfill community-service requirements.

Others are college students from surrounding universities including Seattle University, Shoreline Community College and, of course, the UW. UW volunteers, like Bishop, often find out about programs like this one through the Carlson Center, which coordinates UW service-learning projects with 200 community-based organizations, offering unique hands-on learning opportunities for students.

They come to the program because Books for Prisoners has always been supported entirely by its volunteers, and every one of them is vital to the program’s continued survival and growth.

“It’s a real testament to how important volunteers are that without volunteers, [the program] could not be sustained,” said Kerensa Stoll, another long-term Books to Prisoners worker.

Although at first a radical left-wing organization, Books to Prisoners steers clear of any blatant political agenda today. However, members say there is one common goal that they can agree on.

“I think [for] almost everybody that’s involved, one of their primary motivations is literacy and love of reading,” Chan said. “There’s the difference it can make internally — that someone can learn something.”

Organizations like Books to Prisoners don’t only make a difference in the lives of the people they serve. The volunteers believe that they gain knowledge and understanding often difficult to grasp in a traditional lecture or seminar.

“I feel like I’ve gained a bit of compassion towards people in jail,” Bishop said. “They’ve done these horrible crimes, but they’re still people, and they still feel isolated. [What we do] helps them feel a little more human.”

Reach reporter Natalie Johnson at news@dailyuw.com.