Provision of Library and Information/’ Resources and Services to meet Prisoners Information Needs in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to study the provision of library and information resources and services to meet prisoners’ information needs in south east Nigeria. Three research questions were formulated to guide the study. The design of the study was a descriptive survey while the population comprised of all the prisoners in all the prisons in south east Nigeria and the welfare as well as library workers of these prisons are the population. The sample size was 722 including 708 prisoners and 14 library and welfare workers of out of a population of 6404 prisoners and library and welfare workers in the prisons under study, representing 5% of the population. Purposive random sampling technique was used to select the prisons that have libraries. A structure questionnaire titled Provision of Library and Information Resources and Services to meet Prisoners’ Information Needs Questionnaire (PLIRSPINQ) and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) schedule were the instruments used to generate data for the study. Descriptive method of analysis was used in answering the research questions. The data was analyzed using mean and standard deviation while the data from the Focus Group Discussion was qualitatively analyzed. Findings show that most of the prisoners were male while very few were female; there are few middle aged and very few elderly with majority of them being youths. Findings also showed that the varieties of library resources and services as well as human resources provided are grossly inadequate considering the population of the prisoners. Findings showed that a number of strategies could be used to enhance the provision of library and information resources and services to meet the prisoners’ information needs. They include liaising with public libraries, NGOs, religion bodies, legal practitioners, liaising with professional bodies like the library associations, granting the prisoners more access to information and developing new and using existing guidelines to prison library services.