Harry Potter among top 5 books prisoners love to read in their cell

From fantasies of being a bulletproof “noble loner” without a home or bank account, to aspirations of witchcraft and wizardry, here are the five books inmates read the most.

Inside the prison walls, some of NSW’s toughest inmates spend their time dreaming of being a 1.96m-tall bulletproof “noble loner” without a home or bank account called Jack Reacher.

Reacher — billed as the man that men want to be and women want to be with — is author Lee Child’s fictional hero and features in four of the top five books borrowed from prison libraries this year.

The fifth book in the Top 5 is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Beyond the Top 5, prisoners’ reading tastes suggest they aspire to turn the page on their lives and escape the rat race.

One popular book — Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! — teaches readers how they don’t need high income to get rich.

With true crime books banned from the prison shelves, library services manager Rebecca Bollen Manalac said the favourite nonfiction books were English language, finance, spiritual enlightenment and psychological self-help texts.

“Books keep offenders engaged, encourage good behaviour and inspire new ways of learning by teaching goal setting and positive communication,” Ms Bollen Manalac said.

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novel Past Tense was the most frequently borrowed book.

“Access to fiction, nonfiction and legal texts is a vital component in inmate rehabilitation — it improves literacy, keeps inmates in touch with society and provides them with the skills for a successful post-release life.”

Consistently among the most popular books borrowed from prison libraries is Shantaram, by former heroin addict and convicted bank robber Gregory David Roberts, who famously became one of Australia’s most wanted when he escaped from Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison while serving 19 years and fled to India.

Shantaram: A novel popular with inmates, written by fellow crim Gregory David Roberts

His 939-page novel ­Shantaram is ideal for prisoners with a lot of time to fill.

The Lee Childs titles that make up four of the most circulated Top 5 fiction books are Past Tense, Blue Moon, Night School and 61 Hours.

At Dillwynia Correctional Centre, the Top 5 books are The Dry by Jane Harper, Angel of Death by Jack Higgins, Damaged by Cathy Glass, The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and Chinese-language books by various authors – the most borrowed within these is a Song of the Desert (also translated as Ballad of the Desert) by Tong Hua.

Other Jack Reacher titles, like Blue Moon, were also popular.

‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows' by J.K. Rowling came in at no. five.

At the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre, the Top 5 include language books which are loaned out to other centres like are Harrap’s Standard Learners’ English Dictionary and the Tuttle Concise Chinese Dictionary.

Their overall Top 5 includes Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kirosaki, 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote For Chaos by Jordan B Peterson, and Shantaram.

Inmates can use an application on their in-cell tablets to search the library catalogue and submit book purchase suggestions and information requests.

There is also a plan underway to include the State Library NSW IndyReads e-book platform on the tablets by mid-2023 to increase access to e-books and audiobooks in English and other languages.

CSNSW Commissioner Kevin Corcoran said prison libraries gave inmates a “positive pathway to rehabilitation and new skills to help with a successful post-release life”.

“We have a significant library collection for information and recreation, which can guide offenders to live life by the book post-release,” Mr Corcoran said.