Welcome to the Haven Distribution Website

Haven Distribution aims to provide practical support to prisoners within the UK by:

• Purchasing educational literature for inmates who are currently attending courses whilst in prison;
• Providing dictionaries in English and other languages to inmates whose first language is not English;
• Providing large print dictionaries and books on improving reading and writing skills to inmates with dyslexia;

If you are a prisoner attending an educational course such as NVQ, Open University, A Level, etc., and would like help in purchasing specific course literature, we may be able to help.

Haven Distribution will purchase books for prisoners' courses to a maximum of £20 per person, per calendar year. We encourage prisoners to leave the books in the prison library once the course is finished so that other prisoners can use them.

If you would like an application form, please download it here, or send a stamped self-addressed envelope to us at the address above. Due to limited resources, Haven Distribution is unable to help with the purchase of books for general reading. Please speak to the prison librarian for more information about ordering non-educational books.

Read more about our work in our 2011 annual report (pdf).

Listen to our appeal for support on Radio 4:

"My support for Haven books stems from my own prison experience. When I went to prison for life in 1984 I had no hope or any sense at all that I would or could ever again live any kind of a contributing life. If anything I was relieved that my destructive life was effectively over. Life outside had been painful for me, but more importantly painful for other people because of me. I entered prison an inarticulate, ill-educated brute - but luckily I was literate. Books provided a gateway into education and through education I learned a better way to live.

"Despite the best efforts of various prison libraries however, getting hold of the right books was always a struggle. Sometimes it took months to locate a particular textbook. It was three years before I owned my own dictionary. Significantly I think, the most popular requests to Haven even today are for dictionaries.

"Over the years I counted books among my best friends in prison. They gave me hope, for sure - but more than anything they were the practical means to achieving a life worth living. When the chance came for me to write for the Guardian newspaper from my prison cell fifteen years into my sentence I realised that unwittingly I had been preparing for the opportunity with books. Books inspired me to become a writer and for the first time in my life enabled me to become a contributor to my society.

"I have never considered myself to be a spokesman for prisoners, but I met hardly anyone during my twenty years inside who did not have the desire to change and a yearning to live a crime free life. Without books few of us would ever make it. For that reason I applaud the ideals of Haven books. Every book this tiny organisation sends into a prison represents a potential key to a better life for the individual recipient - and to a safer community for everyone."

Erwin James is a Guardian columnist and author of two books: A Life Inside and The Home Stretch. He is a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust and a patron of the charity CREATE, which promotes the arts and creative activities among marginalized groups. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (FRSA) and an Honorary Master of the Open University (MUniv.)