After a 19-yr-old female inmate accused of assaulting her caretaker was booked into the Pinal County Sheriff’s Jail, her first and repeated request was for reading materials.

This presented itself as a relatively atypical request for Detention Officers, however, as the inmate was blind.

As a result, members of the Pinal County Sheriff’s Detention Staff began working to identify a solution. That is when with Arizona Talking Book Library, at the Arizona State Library, a Division of the Secretary of State to provide inmates with audio books and magazines and Braille books and magazines.

Recently, another female inmate, 26-year-old Dianna – who asked PCSO not to include her last name – was booked into the Sheriff’s Jail for a probation violation.

Dianna is legally blind and deaf and appreciated when detention staff informed her books would be made available to her.

She read The Desert of Wheat, by Zane Grey, and though she is thankful she will likely not be incarcerated long enough to make it through a second book, she said she can understand the potential benefit for those who may remain in jail for a prolonged amount of time.

With six books on loan, two audio machines and only a month into the program, many elderly inmates and veterans have already taken advantage of the new program.