Kindness of strangers helps Iowa prisoners fill the time

In a smallish room near inmate cells at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville lives Bilbo Baggins of “The Hobbit” and Luke Skywalker battles the Empire in “Star Wars.”

One hundred miles west, in the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women, occasional sport jackets and skirts add variety to a monotonous prison wardrobe and offer inmates a crutch toward success on the outside.

The libraries in Iowa's nine prisons and the shared wardrobes for job interviews upon release are supported largely through donations.

Donated items, worth tens of thousands of dollars annually, that the Iowa Department of Corrections takes in aren't limited to books and clothes. Food pantries give perishables to prison kitchens, and volunteers bring recreational items, like balls and puzzles.

Religious organizations give to help prisoners continue practicing their faith while behind bars.

“One thing we could probably use is some of the non-Christian religious books,” said Greg Ort, deputy warden at the Iowa Medical Classification Center in Coralville. “We have some Muslims and Jewish offenders, and it would be nice if we had some stuff for them here.”

According to an analysis of gift reports filed by the corrections department with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board in recent years, the number and value of donations peaked in 2008 and has been declining since.

Prison officials, however, say they haven't noticed a drop, explaining that a single large gift can skew data and create an inaccurate perception of a steep rise or fall.

“For example, we got a huge donation of books four or five weeks ago,” Ort said. “That would cause a big upswing.”

The value of donations jumped from $45,829 in 2007 to $287,464 in 2008, mostly due to a hefty food donation from Iowa City's Table to Table that was worth more than $145,500. The number and value of donations to Iowa's prisons has declined since then, dropping to $161,294 in 2009 and $86,910 in 2010, according to state records.

Still, Ort said, he believes overall giving is steady, save occasional large donations.

In fact, Ort said, the flow of donations at times is “more than adequate,” and officials have to reject gifts that don't meet prison standards. “For security reasons, we have to be careful with donations,” he said.

Still, Ort said, donated materials abound in prisons, and many inmates aren't even aware of all the donated items they use every day.

“We play that pretty low-key because we have some highly manipulative individuals who might try to push their own agenda with a generous group of people,” Ort said. “We don't want inmates contacting people and asking them to do things for them.”

Phil Hunter, 39, is serving time at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center and working in the general population library, checking out volumes and wheeling book carts into living units. Hunter said he's aware that many of the library materials are donated, and he's grateful.

“It's pretty amazing how happy people are to see you when you take the book cart into their unit with new books,” Hunter said. “So I would say it's pretty important.”

Hunter makes good use of the reading material himself. “I'm a Stephen King fanatic,” he said.

“I'm always impressed that people take the time to think about the prisons and make donations,” said Diann Wilder-Tomlinson, deputy director of the Iowa Department of Correction's western region and former warden of the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville. “The women and the men all make very good use of them.”

Most of the donated items go toward rehabilitating inmates, Wilder-Tomlinson said, explaining that the women's prison receives a lot of donated clothes that inmates use for job interviews as they prepare to be released.

“I have heard women say that is very valuable for them,” Wilder-Tomlinson said.

Jerry Burt, deputy director for the Department of Correction's eastern region, said many of the donors are people who volunteer with the inmates and already invest a lot of time in their rehabilitation.

“We also have some gifts from members of our staff,” he said. “Many of the staff members here are avid readers, and after they read something, they like to donate it to the institution.”

Organizations like Iowa City's Table to Table have given thousands of dollars in food donations to Iowa's prisons. Although much of it stays in the institutions and feeds the inmates, some of the large-quantity items sit in prison freezers and come back out to feed the community as needed, said Bob Andrlik, executive director of Table to Table, a non-profit organization that distributes food throughout the community.

“Our focus is to make sure that wholesome food doesn't go to waste,” Andrlik said.

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