Resources we send
Here are a few of our resource lists that we share with the people who write in to our project. Please share and use freely. If you know of an organization that you think should be added to our resource lists, please let us know.
- General Resource List for LGBTQ+ people in prison (PDF; updated January 2021)
- Trans Resource Guide for trans people in prison (PDF; updated June 2022)
- Coming Out Guide for LGBTQ+ people in prison (PDF; updated April 2019)
- Safer Sex while in Prison and HIV guide (PDF; updated April 2019)
- LGBTQ+ Terms for people in prison (PDF; updated April 2019)
Prison abolition
Many people ask about prison abolition and alternatives to the prison industrial complex. A partner organization, No Dane County Jail, hosts comprehensive resources on both:
Local and national resources
Partner projects
- Black and Pink
Black and Pink’s mission is to abolish the criminal punishment system and to liberate LGBTQIA2S+ people/people living with HIV who are affected by that system, through advocacy, support, and organizing.
Readings and videos
The short list below is a primer we recommend to new volunteers, organizers, and people beginning to think about abolition and incarceration. Check them out!
- Prison Culture website, reading list, and blog by Mariame Kaba, and find her on Twitter at @prisonculture.
- Books:
- Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Eric Stanley and Nat Smith, eds. AK Press. (2015)
- Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You compilation, Ryan Conrad, ed. AK Press. (2014)
- No One is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition videos with Dean Spade and Tourmaline from Barnard Center for Research on Women
- Coming out of Concrete Closets: A report on Black & Pink’s National LGBTQ Prisoner Survey, Jason Lydon et al. Black and Pink. (2015)
- The following Ta Nehisi Coates articles:
- The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration, The Atlantic, Oct. 2015
- The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic, June 2014
LGBTQ+ Archive
The University of Madison-Wisconsin Archives hosts an LGBTQ+ Archive in Steenbock Library on campus. We are grateful to the LGBTQ+ Archive for being the permanent home of our letters and organizational materials dating back to 2007.
The archive is open to the public with some restrictions about how you use or replicate the materials in order to protect the people we serve. If you’re a researcher and want to work with our materials, we would love to work with you! For your reference, the finding guide for our materials is live.
LGBT Books to Prisoners collection finding aid