America’s unseen book bans: the long history of censorship in prisons
On a Monday night, just after six, Alicia Williams waits for the last stragglers to take their seats in her cramped classroom at the Washington corrections center. Her students braved western Washington’s fall weather to get here and they enter the room still ruffled from the wind, their khaki uniforms flecked with rain.
There is no rush. Instead of the lesson she planned to teach, Williams will be relying on hastily adjusted notes and on-the-spot explanations. She’d just heard she wasn’t allowed to teach the book her class was scheduled to discuss that night.
The course is English 233, children’s literature. The offending text? All Boys Aren’t Blue, a book recommended for adolescents ages 16 and up.
For many Americans, the concept of book banning until recently brought up images from earlier, more oppressive societies – grainy black-and-white film of Nazi book burning rallies, photos of McCarthy-era crowds exuberantly hurling books and political pamphlets now considered laughably tame on to bonfires.
But in recent years, books have again become a flashpoint in civic discourse, and book banning and censorship in the education system have made a comeback. Nearly every state has seen conflict over school curricula and public library catalogues.
Groups such as the pressure organization Moms for Liberty have scrutinized school libraries, hunting books that examine race or LGBTQ+ issues and demanding their removal. Conservative commentators have dedicated lengthy segments to the purported dangers of certain books, and have persuaded large swaths of Americans that critical race theory, a graduate-level college course, is being widely taught in US grade schools. Video of fistfights breaking out at PTA meetings and tirades during town halls have racked up millions of internet views. Book banning has entered the talking points of political campaigns, infusing the dynamics of everything from city council elections to gubernatorial and presidential debates. School book bans ballooned 33% between 2022 and 2023, according to the Freedom to Read Foundation, a first amendment defense organization. Authors whose books have been targeted include Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner and James Joyce.
Few people are aware, however, that book banning is a widespread and longstanding practice in US prisons. Carceral facilities scrutinize what books and magazines can be offered in their libraries, can be taught in their classes or can be mailed to people on the inside.
In many states, the list of banned publications is long. The Florida department of corrections alone has 22,825 books banned from its libraries, according to an October 2023 report by the non-profit PEN America. The Texas department of corrections is second to
Florida with 10,265 bans. The Kansas DOC has banned 7,669 books. Virginia DOC, 7,204. By comparison, in the first eight months of 2023, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom received reports of 1,915 attempts to remove books from public, school and academic libraries.
“Even if you accept the premise that there are dangerous books out there, it strains credulity to suggest there are 10 times as many books that are dangerous for adults than there are books that are dangerous for children,” says Anthony Blankenship, an expert on prison policy at the Washington non-profit Civil Survival. “Florida is the worst when it comes to book banning, but every department of corrections is engaged in it. It’s something educators and incarcerated students have to deal with in every state,” he says.
Particularly troubling, according to PEN America, is the arbitrary way book bans are decided upon by some prison authorities, and the lack of clarity about the qualifications of the people imposing these bans. In a statement, the organization noted that employment at correctional facilities requires only a GED or high school diploma, “which means staff empowered to censor books may have only basic literacy themselves”.
A Washington department of corrections spokesperson said that the agency maintained a publication review committee that approves or re