Georgia is Stopping a Bookstore from Sending Books to Prisons

Avid Bookshop is an independent bookstore in Athens, Georgia, a college town in Northern Georgia. The bookstore stocks new releases and classics. Curated by their book-loving staff, Avid has been regularly voted by residents and visitors as a community gem in an area with few booksellers outside of big box stores. 

This favorable reputation is not shared by the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office, which denied delivery of books from Avid to a person being detained in the Gwinnett County Jail in 2023 (the jail is around an hour’s drive from the store). The Office claimed that Avid was not on a list of “approved vendors.” Many prisons and jails prohibit all literature mailed from local, independent bookstores through “approved vendor” policies that limit the outlets detained and incarcerated people can receive and order books from. 

Read the full article on The Progressive