Library Services as Correctional Infrastructure: The Role of Public Library Partnerships in Prisons (PID024)
Coffee Break & Exhibition
Victoria Barnett is a Prison Libraries Development Manager for Kent County Council and Chair of the CILIP Prison Libraries Group. She has worked in prison libraries since 2012, and took on the role of Prison Libraries Development Manager in 2018 where she manages the 5 prison libraries in Kent. These prisons are all very different establishments: an open women’s prison; an open men’s prison; a designated foreign national men’s prison; a local Category C men’s prison; and a long-term high security men’s prison. Each presents its own unique challenges, and the needs of the people in custody vary considerably across the sites. Managing services across such diverse environments has given Victoria a broad understanding of the role that libraries can play in rehabilitation, wellbeing, and access to information.
Alongside her operational role, Victoria has been an active member of the CILIP Prison Libraries Group, and was appointed Chair of the committee in 2021. The Group’s mission is to raise the profile of prison libraries, improve standards across the estate, and support the staff who deliver these essential services. In 2025, Victoria gave evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee on the value of prison libraries, and she is frequently invited to speak to organisations and professional groups interested in learning more about the impact of library services within the criminal justice system.
Jessica Almeida is a mental health therapist working with justice-involved populations in the United States, with a background in psychology and advanced training in clinical practice. Her work focuses on the intersection of mental health, gender, and incarceration, particularly in relation to the experiences of women in correctional settings.
She completed her academic training in Brazil, where she conducted empirical research inside a women’s penitentiary examining the psychological impact of maternal separation. Her academic and professional experiences reflect a continued interest in how structural and social factors shape pathways into and out of the criminal justice system.
Her current work and research interests focus on reintegration, mental health, and gender-responsive approaches within correctional systems. She is particularly interested in how correctional systems can better respond to the complex realities of women’s lives beyond incarceration.
Dr Lee Chee Sean is a family physician with a focus on correctional health at Changi General Hospital, Singapore, where he oversees medical services at the women’s correctional facility in collaboration with the Singapore Prison Service. His clinical approach emphasises attentive, longitudinal care for a population with complex and often under-recognised needs, including chronic disease, mental health conditions, and gender-specific health concerns. He is particularly interested in how care models can be adapted to better support women in custody, taking into account their distinct clinical and psychosocial profiles.
In his role, Dr Lee works closely with nursing, allied health, and operational teams to ensure care delivery remains consistent, responsive, and respectful within a structured environment. He has been involved in strengthening workflows that support early identification of health issues, continuity of treatment, and coordination across services. His practice reflects a broader commitment to thoughtful, patient-centred care in correctional settings, contributing to ongoing efforts to improve health outcomes for women in custody
Beth M. Huebner is Director and Watts Professor of Community Safety in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. She is a nationally recognized scholar whose research focuses on punishment, corrections, and community safety, with particular attention to jail and prison practices, monetary sanctions, community supervision, and racial and socioeconomic inequality in the criminal legal system. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Criminal Justice from Michigan State University and her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Huebner’s work is deeply engaged with policy and practice. She has led or co-led numerous large-scale, community-engaged research projects funded by organizations such as the MacArthur Foundation, Arnold Ventures, the National Institute of Justice, and state agencies. Her scholarship appears in leading journals including Criminology, Criminology & Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, and Criminal Justice and Behavior, and she has authored or edited several influential books on sentencing, punishment, and corrections
A Fellow of the American Society of Criminology, Dr. Huebner has received multiple national awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division on Corrections and Sentencing. She is widely sought as a policy advisor, public speaker, and collaborator committed to advancing equitable and evidence-based approaches to community safety.
Jacob Newsome is Founder and Executive Director of The Narrative Project, a Houston-based 501(c)(3) developing narrative-based interventions for justice-involved youth and incarcerated individuals. In 2026 he completed a pilot with Harris County Juvenile Probation producing a +33 point shift in emotional and identity-based measures, 81% immediate positive response, and zero behavioral escalations in a single session. That data is now before the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, where Jacob has been invited to meet with committee staff as part of the interim study on juvenile justice and emerging adult review.
Jacob brings to this work something no credential can confer: the lived knowledge of a Black gay man who has moved through institutions designed to diminish rather than develop. His healing from Complex PTSD is not biography offered for sympathy. It is epistemology, the reason his intervention produces in one session what traditional programming struggles to produce across months.
