Florida blocks 20,000 titles and Texas blocks 10,000 titles they claim could stir up disorder. 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.Įven in places without wholesale bans, corrections departments are cracking down. 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. They say there’s been an uptick of drug smuggling via books, whose pages can be soaked with synthetic marijuana or other potent liquids. The state spends $350,000 annually on recreational books for prisoners, much more than other states do.Ĭiting concerns about contraband, officials around the country are ratcheting up restrictions on what gets into prison libraries. Still, California has one of the better prison library programs. At his last prison, he says the librarians stocked the shelves largely with books inmates had requested from family and nonprofits. 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.Ībout half the books that make up the library collection at California State Prison, Sacramento, are donated.Īndrea Hubbard is the senior librarian at California State Prison, Sacramento, Facility B.īut for Michael Blanco, who is 19 years into an 87-to-life sentence, this represents a vast improvement. A back room holds metal cages where prisoners with behavioral problems can do legal research. It almost feels like a classroom, except that the library’s computers don’t connect to the internet, and there’s no natural light. Some of them lean forward in their chairs as they listen one traces the words with his index finger. The librarian introduces the day’s pick, Doris Lessing’s A Sunrise on the Veld, and the men take turns reading it aloud. ![]() Behind the walls of California State Prison, Sacramento, six inmates gather in the library for their weekly short-story club.
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