Books
Have the Power to Rehabilitate. But Prisons Are Blocking Access to Them
Mother
Jones: Jan/Feb 2020 by Samantha Michaels
Behind
the walls of California State Prison, Sacramento, six inmates gather in the
library for their weekly short-story club. The librarian introduces the day’s
pick, Doris Lessing’s A Sunrise on the Veld, and the men take turns reading it
aloud. Some of them lean forward in their chairs as they listen; one traces the
words with his index finger. It almost feels like a classroom, except that the
library’s computers don’t connect to the internet, and there’s no natural
light. A back room holds metal cages where prisoners with behavioral problems
can do legal research. About half the books are donated, many from a public
library, and the pickings are slim: Nonfiction is kept behind the counter, and
most of the fiction is locked away in a small room.
About
half the books that make up the library collection at California State Prison,
Sacramento, are donated.
But
for Michael Blanco, who is 19 years into an 87-to-life sentence, this
represents a vast improvement. At his last prison, he says the librarians
stocked the shelves largely with books inmates had requested from family and
nonprofits. Still, California
has one of the better prison library programs. The state spends $350,000
annually on recreational books for prisoners, much more than other states do.
Citing
concerns about contraband, officials around the country are ratcheting up
restrictions on what gets into prison libraries. They say there’s been an uptick
of drug smuggling via books, whose pages can be soaked with synthetic marijuana
or other potent liquids. In September 2018, Pennsylvania’s corrections
department temporarily banned all book donations after dozens of prison
staffers landed in the emergency room with tingling skin, headaches, and
dizziness after handling inmates’ belongings. New York, Maryland, and the
Federal Bureau of Prisons have adopted similar policies, and Washington state
banned most used books from its prisons, though all eventually backtracked
because of public outrage.
Even in places without wholesale bans, corrections departments are cracking down. Florida blocks 20,000 titles and Texas blocks 10,000 titles they claim could stir up disorder. A recent report by PEN America decried similar restrictions around the country as so arbitrary and sweeping as to effectively be “the nation’s largest book ban.” Texas prisons have prohibited Where’s Waldo? and a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets with racy illustrations. Literary groups and activists banded together to protest the censorship in Florida prisons by appealing to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2018. “Access to compelling books can be a godsend,” they wrote in an amicus brief, “for both prisoners and the rest of us, who benefit when prisoners have constructive outlets and better odds of rehabilitation.” READ MORE ➤➤
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