Warden corrects misstep on access to books
Idle hands may be the devil’s workshop, but a languishing mind is, well, a sin. Officials of the Allegheny County Jail unwittingly tilled the earth for misdeed by limiting inmate access to books last month. The misdeed? Not necessarily or solely a boost in infractions by bored prisoners, though that could have happened. Rather, the misdeed was the decreased access itself. Because, though the move was purportedly aimed at improving safety and security within the jail, it was a move that threatened the one freedom no one ever should be denied — the freedom of the intellect and the means to expand that intellect through reading.
With a little public pressure and a push from the American Civil Liberties Union, the jail has since made straight its path.
The trouble started with a change in policy at the lockup regarding the shipment of purchased books, direct from seller to inmate.
In sum, the shipments were banned.
There is no substantiated reason to doubt the veracity of a written statement at the time from Warden Orlando Harper that the change was related to concern about potential contraband infiltrating the facility. Nonetheless, it was a wrong move. Warden Harper pointed to inmate access to fewer than 300 digital books and 10,000 titles in the in-house library as adequate, at least temporarily, to occupy the minds and the time of the facility’s prisoners who number more than 1,500 people. But the right to read a book of one’s own choosing — especially a book that has been properly purchased by an inmate or his friends or family — should not be abridged, short of extraordinary circumstances. And those extraordinary circumstances did not exist.
The First Amendment implies the right of access to books. Freedom of speech is not just the freedom to speak, but the freedom to read. There is case law to support this contention. And that case law was cited in a strongly worded letter from the
ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Abolitionist Law Center and the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, dated Dec. 1, and sent to the warden as well as the jail’s oversight board.
“Depriving incarcerated persons of opportunities to read and limiting their ability to do so is fundamentally at odds with the rehabilitative ideal,” the letter notes. And the authors rightly add that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in limitations on family and community connection for inmates, has made access to a wide range of books even more critical.
The warden made a misstep in banning the shipment of purchased books. But he is back on track. In fact, the status quo has not only been restored, it has been improved.
The Allegheny County Jail has enhanced its partnership with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh to provide more service to jail inmates. The jail is in a new partnership with a digital distributor of e-books that will provide access to a catalog of more than 6 million titles. Book drives to enhance the ACJ’s physical library are ongoing through the HOPE Chaplaincy Services office. And the warden resumed the practice of allowing family members and friends to order books for inmates from barnesandnoble.com and christianbooks.com, effective Dec. 2. County officials said “additional staff training has been completed and other controls have been put in place related to the review of printed materials to allow the program to resume.”
Sara Rose, senior staff attorney with the Pittsburgh office of the ACLU, is satisfied. “[W]e believe that resolves the issues,” she wrote in an email on Dec. 14.
Warden Harper may have meant well with his suspension of the book shipment program, but good intentions aren’t good enough. The ACLU and its partners are to be commended for holding the warden to account, and the warden was wise to change course when his misstep was brought to light.