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A study examined the literacy needs and activities of prison inmates in Australia. To gather data for the study, the researchers interviewed and administered questionnaires to 62 inmates from five Australian prisons. This report consists primarily of the comments and views of the individual prisoners who were clients, potential clients, and confirmed nonclients of educational classes in the five prisons included in the study. The focus of these data collection efforts was on the prisoners' appraisals of their own reading and writing abilities and the value they recognized in such activities, their opinions and suggestions on the ways in which reading and writing may be taught more effectively within the prison context, the role that reading and writing may play in individual cases of rehabilitation, and the most common requests made by inmates with reference to literacy education. The appendixes contain materials that supplement the data. The first appendix consists of a summary of the content of the interview questions used in the study, a brief sketch of the study respondents, a description of the transcripts recording the project interviews and observations, and a discussion of the methods of data analysis used in the study. Included in the second appendix are the transcript and questionnaire references used in the compilation of the first four chapters of the sutdy report. The third appendix is a recommended reading list. Concluding the volume is a paper entitled "Literacy, Literature, and Prison" that deals with the place of literature in the process of becoming and remaining literate. (MN)