USD Magazine, Fall 1995

f;fii,iitl!I LMANAC I

When

Anita Good Peterson '64 goes to work each day, she clips on a personal alarm, passes through several locked gates and nods to the armed guards man– ning the yards adjacent to her office. Yet she says she feels safer here than she did in her previous jobs. Peterson is senior librarian at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, a maximum securi– ty prison with 4,600 inmates. Her previ– ous jobs included 25 years with California and Texas public libraries, which she notes draw a wide clientele that can include a few unsavory characters. These days, violence is not unheard of in public libraries, which typically have small staffs at night and little or no security. "Even though we have convicted crim– inals in here," Peterson says about her current place of employment, "we have a lot of unconvicted criminals out there." Security is just one advantage she sees in working behind prison walls. Another is that the clientele - the inmates - show their appreciation of the library and its managers more than those in the public sector do. Perhaps that is because the library represents one of the positive relationships the inmates can establish in a correctional facility, says Peterson, who notes that the inmates and librari– ans inevitably learn from each other as they work together. The satisfaction she derives from help– ing her clients is one reason Peterson continues to be drawn to library work after 32 years. She began her career in high school as a library clerk, then worked at the libraries of the College for Men and College for Women while at USD. After graduating, she began working in public libraries and, over the years, earned a master's degree in library science and completed much of the work toward a master's degree in public administration. Peterson was first introduced to the prison library system in 1991, when she was working at the public library in Brawley, Calif. A new correctional facility was opening in nearby Calipatria and the

could provide reasonable access to the courts by providing a law library. Don– ovan's central library is that library. The other libraries at the facility are recre– ational libraries that Peterson says help maintain order by providing inmates with a positive activity to pursue. Though the inmates can hold the administrators accountable for following the regulations of the state prison sys– tem, they still live very much under the control of the prison authorities. When using the libraries, for example, inmates must preschedule appointments, they are checked into and out of the library with their I.D.s and there is a maximum capacity of 20 inmates allowed in the central library, 15 in the recreational libraries. This controlled system, along with the numerous sec urity measures in place throughout the facility, eases the anxiety some feel when walking through the locked gates. In fact, Peterson says she gets a certain measure of comfort from the rules and regulations. Peterson's belief in the system, partic– ularly the security measures, was proved one day when she was pushing a cart full of books and accidentally pressed her personal alarm. Police came running immediately from every corner of the complex. A bit sheepishly, Peterson explained to the police that her alarm went off by mistake, and they all returned to their posts. Peterson laughs about the incident now, but also reflects with confidence that she truly is safe behind the prison walls.

prison manager held an open house to introduce the local residents to the facili– ty and invite job applications. Though Peterson went to the open house mostly out of curiosity, she turned in an appli– cation and was hired for the library. She admits that she was leery about her new position, but one thing definite– ly made the transition easier: There were no inmates at the facility - yet. She had a chance to get the library set up before the first busload of inmates arrived. As soon as she started interviewing inmates for the available clerk positions, Peterson says she saw their willingness to learn, which made them less frightening to her. The initial fears she had evaporated. The regulations and red tape involved in operating a prison library also quickly become part of the routine, she says. To demonstrate the complexity of the rules she must follow in managing the six libraries at Donovan, Peterson points to eight volumes of regulations on her bookshelves. Not only do the regulations mandate such procedures as how to pur– chase books, but they specify which books must be stocked in the law library, the central library for the facility. "Sometimes your success in a day is measured by being able to get the paper– work through," Peterson says with a smile. Peterson is not the only person reviewing those regulations, however. The inmates have access to the rules and can appeal if they believe a regulation is not being followed. In fact, inmates in 1977 actually established the mandate for law libraries in prisons by suing for access to the courts (Bounds vs. Smith). The judge on the case ruled that a prison

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