With the start of Banned Books Week and Prison Banned Books Week only just in our rear view mirror, I thought to round up a brilliant series of essays penned by currently incarcerated people that was organized by my colleague Kelly Jensen, who has, quite frankly, been leading the charge in advocating against censorship.
Below are first-hand accounts of currently incarcerated people and their experiences reading in prison.
Free Prison Tablets Aren’t Actually Free
State prisons censor more books than schools and libraries combined—yes, even amid astonishingly high numbers of book bans nationwide. Despite this long-documented reality, prison censorship coverage continues to be limited and legislation to ensure that incarcerated individuals have access to libraries, as well as print and digital books, is sorely lacking. Recidivism goes down when individuals experiencing incarceration have access to books, but prisons limit access by not having libraries or only having old and out-of-date materials in those libraries; putting extreme limits on where and how books can be sent to those inside the facility; overcharging for a limited selection of digital books on pricey, proprietary, and lousy ereaders; allowing mailroom employees to pick and choose what they determine to be “appropriate”; or a combination of these or other factors.
Uninspired Reading by Ken Meyers
We’d been able to buy our GTL “Inspire” tablets for three years before the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections expanded the short list of functions to include ebooks. Under normal circumstances, I would have been delighted. But this was no act of generosity by the DOC. The ebook functionality came in the wake of 2018’s DOC-engineered drug-exposure “crisis” that led to a contract with Smart Communications to scan our mail, thus eliminating that stream of paper, and which briefly banned all books before settling on a DOC-run Security Processing Center to inspect books and periodicals for contraband. The ultimate DOC policy might not have banned physical books outright, and it’s possible there isn’t an explicit plan to try to reduce the number of books entering Pennsylvania prisons, but delays in delivery, damage to books, and the frequency with which books are lost certainly discourage ordering them. Still, whatever the DOC’s motivation, ebooks had to be a win for us inmates as well.
Mark Twain Goes to Prison
Nearly twenty years ago, when I first got to prison I never thought I would become a writer, read John Updike, Luigi Pirandello, have a tablet that allowed me to play games and listen to music, or debate the merit of an old Mark Twain quote. Yet I here I am.
Entering the prison library as a fish or newbie, I was astounded to find so many books on the shelves, and to notice how reverently the other prisoners treated them. On my first day, I was shocked to see an older prisoner chastise a younger man for cracking the spine of a larger book he was perusing. “Young man, don’t do that. Don’t crack the spine on that book. It causes the pages to fall out. What we’ve got, we’ve got to take care of.” When the younger prisoner didn’t scoff at the older prisoner’s advice, I figured I’d best follow suit. I treated each book I examined like it was a precious gem.
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