BANNED BOOK IS BACK
DOC lifts ban of ‘The New Jim Crow’ at 2 NJ prisons after ACLU protests >>
TRENTON » A book that highlights the pitfalls of mass incarceration will no longer be lumped in with Hustler magazine as banned literature at two New Jersey state prisons.
The New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) announced Monday afternoon in an email that the agency would lift the ban on Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and Southern State Correctional in Cumberland County.
“It should be noted that there was no departmentwide ban on the book,” DOC spokesman Matthew Schuman said in an email, noting the agency is reviewing its policy on banned written materials. “Significantly, ‘The New Jim Crow’ is being utilized as a teaching tool in the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education Program (NJ-STEP), through which NJDOC inmates enroll in college-level courses while incarcerated.”
Prior to the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey sent a letter Monday to DOC Commissioner Gary M. Lanigan requesting the agency to immediately remove “The New Jim Crow” from its banned publications list. The organization uncovered that the two prisons banned the book after submitting a public records request.
“The New Jim Crow is an important work on the endemic racial bias of prison systems in the United States,” the ACLU letter states. “New Jersey has the single worst Black-white racial disparity in incarceration in the country. For the
state burdened with systemic injustice to prohibit prisoners from reading a book about race and mass incarceration is grossly ironic, misguided, and harmful. It is also unconstitutional.”
DOC bans materials, such as outdoor survival publications and smut magazines, so that inmates can’t learn escape techniques or look at naked women while they are locked up.
ACLU felt that DOC had taken the ban too far with “The New Jim Crow,” considering New Jersey incarcerates its black residents “at a rate more than 12 times higher than white residents,” the letter states. ACLU said the Garden State also has a more than 12-to-1 ratio of black-to-white inmates, which is the worst racial disparity in the country.
“The DOC — and every player in the criminal justice system, from police officers and prosecutors to judges and legislators — must take affirmative steps to reduce our state’s shameful racial disparities,” the ACLU letter states. “The ban on The New Jim Crow does precisely the opposite and is a step backwards instead. In its worst light, it looks like an attempt to keep impacted people uninformed about the history of the very injustice that defines their daily lives.” U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) also blasted DOC’s policy on banning “The New Jim Crow” at two New Jersey prisons.
“As long as I have been a lawmaker, I have fought for the ‘right to life’ for the incarcerated,” the congresswoman from Ewing said Monday in a statement. “To learn that the New Jersey Department of Corrections has sought to censor a piece of literature that not only exposes the dire need for reform of our prison system, but that also educates the masses is misguided and dangerous. However, sadly, this practice isn’t uncommon.”
Like the ACLU, Watson Coleman said the ban was “infringing on the First Amendment rights of the incarcerated.”
“For far too long, our prison systems have focused on punitive treatment and set aside their duty to rehabilitate,” Watson Coleman said. “It is clear; this is about the system and the individual. Our work as elected officials to reform the criminal justice system and rehabilitate the incarcerated centers around having access to the musings, research, and findings of published thought leaders. It is an essential piece of decision-making for legislators as well as those who are seeking knowledge and the courage to break the cycle of recidivism.”
The Trentonian reached out to author Michelle Alexander for comment about the ban.
She wrote on Facebook that “prison administrators are determined to keep people who are locked up as ignorant as possible about the racial, social, and political forces that have made the United States the most punitive nation on earth. Thank you to the ACLU of New Jersey for challenging this book ban. I hope this action helps to shine a light on the many ways in which people in prison are routinely denied basic civil and human rights, including the right to read about matters of justice directly relevant to their own lives.”
ACLU of New Jersey did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.