In the news
New York Prisons Lift Ban on Book About Attica Uprising
New York authorities have lifted a ban that had stopped state prison inmates from reading a book about the 1971 Attica Correctional Facility uprising.
Prison Book Bans Don’t Get As Much Attention
Book bans in schools and libraries have been in the news lately, but books are also being banned in prisons without much public attention.
The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom focused on the criminal justice system, published a searchable database of the books banned in 18 state prison systems. Some states, like West Virginia, didn’t provide banned book lists, but the states provided book policies on how they ban books in the first place. Banned book lists are available for download.
News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Andrew Calderon about the project and what it means in West Virginia prisons. by Eric Douglas, March 22, 2023, West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Books and prisoners: organizations and issues
Appalachian Prison Book Project
Challenging mass incarceration through books, education, and community engagement. APBP sends free books to people imprisoned in six Appalachian states (West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland), hosts book clubs inside prisons in our region, and is leading an effort to bring for-credit college courses into prison.
Banned books lists from Books to Prisoners
Links to banned-lists and guidelines for many states. An excessive restriction on reading materials infantilizes incarcerated adults and contributes to an environment of distrust between inmates and correctional officers that hampers rehabilitative goals. The costs outweigh the benefits.
‘It’s basic human dignity’: Groups work to get books to incarcerated people
Grassroots organizations across the country battle prison restrictions and pandemic struggles to send books to incarcerated people.
For the Record: Prisons (2201 report on Pittsburgh Pennsyl
On November 16, 2020, Allegheny County Jail initiated a policy banning inmates from purchasing books from the two retailers that were previously allowed: Barnes and Noble and Christian Book Store. Instead of utilizing these sources, inmates were informed they could read a selection of 49 religious books and 214 other books through the jail’s tablet program. For the Record. Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. Stroshane, Eric. Vol. 6 Issue 1, pp. 3–5, 2021.
Further reading and listening about book banning in prisons
Thanks to the Appalachian Book Project for assistance with gathering sources
Reading Is My Window by Megan Sweeney
Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.
ISBN: 9780807898352
Publication Date: 2010
Library Services and Incarceration by Jeanie Austin
As part of our mission to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all library patrons, our profession needs to come to terms with the consequences of mass incarceration, which have saturated the everyday lives of people in the United States and heavily impacts Black, Indigenous, and people of color; LGBTQ people; and people who are in poverty. Jeanie Austin, a librarian with San Francisco Public Library's Jail and Reentry Services program, helms this important contribution to the discourse, providing tools applicable in a variety of settings. This text covers practical information about services in public and academic libraries, and libraries in juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons, while contextualizing these services for LIS classrooms and interdisciplinary scholars. It powerfully advocates for rethinking the intersections between librarianship and carceral systems, pointing the way towards different possibilities. This clear-eyed text begins with an overview of the convergence of library and information science and carceral systems within the United States, summarizing histories of information access and control such as book banning, and the ongoing work of incarcerated people and community members to gain more access to materials; examines the range of carceral institutions and their forms, including juvenile detention, jails, immigration detention centers, adult prisons, and forms of electronic monitoring; draws from research into the information practices of incarcerated people as well as individual accounts to examine the importance of information access while incarcerated; shares valuable case studies of various library systems that are currently providing both direct and indirect services, including programming, book clubs, library spaces, roving book carts, and remote reference; provides guidance on collection development tools and processes; discusses methods for providing reentry support through library materials and programming, from customized signage and displays to raising public awareness of the realities of policing and incarceration; gives advice on supporting community groups and providing outreach to transitional housing; includes tips for building organizational support and getting started, with advice on approaching library management, creating procedures for challenges, ensuring patron privacy, and how to approach partners who are involved with overseeing the functioning of the carceral facility; and concludes with a set of next steps, recommended reading, and points of reflection.
ISBN: 9780838949450
Publication Date: 2021
Freedom to Learn Campaign
Higher Ed in prison is more than a fight for scholarship, it is a fight for hope and humanity. “When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality…If anything, the needs for self-identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment.” - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
Literature Locked Up: How Prison Book Restriction Policies Constitute the Nation’s Largest Book Ban
W ith over two million Americans incarcerated, the book-restriction regulations within the
United States carceral system
represent the largest book ban policy in the United States.
Prisoners' Right to Read: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights
Suppression of ideas does not prepare people of any age who are incarcerated for life in a free society. Even those individuals who are incarcerated for life require access to information, to literature, and to a window on the world.
‘It’s the racial stuff’: Illinois prison banned, removed books on black history and empowerment from inmate education program
By Peter Nickeas. Chicago Tribune.
Aug 15, 2019. Officials at an Illinois prison suspended an educational program for inmates, launched two internal investigations and removed 200 books from a prison library because many had “racial” content or addressed issues like diversity and inclusion, according to records obtained by the Tribune.
Censorship in Prison Libraries: Danville and Beyond
July 29, 2019. Kendall Harvey, Illinois Library Association. In May 2019, the Illinois library community received an alarming bit of news: Between November 2018 and late January 2019, more than 200 books were removed, censored, or banned from the Education Justice Project library at the Danville Correctional Center, located in East Central Illinois.1 Among these books were titles such as Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington; Don’t Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and The End of Violence in Inner-City America by David M. Kennedy, and “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D.
Restricted Reading: Original Audio Series on Prison Censorship
Reading Is My Window by
Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.
Library Services and Incarceration by
As part of our mission to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all library patrons, our profession needs to come to terms with the consequences of mass incarceration, which have saturated the everyday lives of people in the United States and heavily impacts Black, Indigenous, and people of color; LGBTQ people; and people who are in poverty. Jeanie Austin, a librarian with San Francisco Public Library's Jail and Reentry Services program, helms this important contribution to the discourse, providing tools applicable in a variety of settings. This text covers practical information about services in public and academic libraries, and libraries in juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons, while contextualizing these services for LIS classrooms and interdisciplinary scholars. It powerfully advocates for rethinking the intersections between librarianship and carceral systems, pointing the way towards different possibilities. This clear-eyed text begins with an overview of the convergence of library and information science and carceral systems within the United States, summarizing histories of information access and control such as book banning, and the ongoing work of incarcerated people and community members to gain more access to materials; examines the range of carceral institutions and their forms, including juvenile detention, jails, immigration detention centers, adult prisons, and forms of electronic monitoring; draws from research into the information practices of incarcerated people as well as individual accounts to examine the importance of information access while incarcerated; shares valuable case studies of various library systems that are currently providing both direct and indirect services, including programming, book clubs, library spaces, roving book carts, and remote reference; provides guidance on collection development tools and processes; discusses methods for providing reentry support through library materials and programming, from customized signage and displays to raising public awareness of the realities of policing and incarceration; gives advice on supporting community groups and providing outreach to transitional housing; includes tips for building organizational support and getting started, with advice on approaching library management, creating procedures for challenges, ensuring patron privacy, and how to approach partners who are involved with overseeing the functioning of the carceral facility; and concludes with a set of next steps, recommended reading, and points of reflection.
