"All the energies of censorship are geared toward the prohibition of thought. The point is that you may not think."
-Robert Keable, Censorship of Thought
In recent months, the Prison Industrial Slave Complex (PISC) has begun censoring all books from outside publishers, vendors, book clubs, etc. This is nothing new. The PISC has always refused to allow prisoners to receive certain books that they (the prisoncrats) deem a "threat to institutional security" and the smooth functioning of the prisons. What is new is that ALL BOOKS are now being censored, rejected, and denied in ALL PRISONS across the U.S., and this move on the part of the PISC of denying prisoners any and all books is said to be necessary in order to stop the smuggling of drugs into the prisons. Well, to do that, they would have to fire all Alabama Department of Corrections employees because every week, we are seeing correctional officers and police being arrested for smuggling drugs and other contraband into the prisons.
Books are being censored not because drugs are being smuggled into prisons via books, or because these books are full of falsehoods; they censor and reject books because they know that they contain the truth. The reason why books, especially those on Black and radical history, are being censored is very clear: Education means the beginning of the demise of the prisons—the institution of caging human beings—and prisoncrats take great care that caged slaves of the state remain caged.
During chattel slavery, slaves were not allowed to read or write. As a matter of fact, it was illegal for a slave to learn how to read or write. It was also illegal to teach a slave how to read or write, and any slave caught with a book faced serious consequences. Slavery is hostile to mental culture because it is not profitable. It is, in fact, threatening to the slave system to educate a slave beyond a certain point.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given prisoncrats a real boon in the 1987 Turner v. Safley decision. This case was a ruling on prison communications and gave the green light for prisoncrats to censor incoming mail, as long as it "reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." The Procunier v. Martinez decision, which was overruled in part, states that outgoing mail can also be censored if doing so "furthers an important or substantial governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free expression," though this limitation on First Amendment freedoms must be "no greater than is necessary or essential" to the protection of governmental interest.
Conspiracyz, Scum Pigz, & the Dept. of Censorship
Stolen, censored, and banned: A lyrical essay from the inside on the state's myriad methods of silencing used to effectively vanish people in prison, from prohibiting books and stealing original writings to fabricating entire charges and cases.
The censorship flows both ways. Prisoncrats don't want people on the outside to know what is going on inside, and they don't want prisoners to receive books because they know an educated prisoner population cannot be controlled. There are too many instances of censorship to list here, but one prominent example is Inmates for Action (IFA), a militant prisoners' rights organization formed in 1972 at the maximum-security Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama, known, at that time, as "The Slaughterhouse" for its high incidence of guard brutality.
Members in lockup were not allowed any books or writing instruments. Thus, these inmates had to resort to smuggling lead from pencils and stray pages from newspapers, ultimately copying out the pages of books on toilet paper to pass around to different inmates. In 2001, while held captive at Limestone Prison in Alabama, my cell was searched, and all books, papers, and magazines were confiscated. I was placed in lockup and received a disciplinary citation for creating a "safety and security hazard." All of this because I received a book in the mail that I had ordered from a publisher. I received a rejection slip notifying me that the book had been rejected, and I had 72 hours to appeal the decision. When I did so, I was again searched, placed in lock-up, and given a write-up.
South Carolina prisoncrats have been rejecting publications such as San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper, a Black, anti-prison, anti-racist publication. Kevin Rashid Johnson reports being denied this publication at the Perry Correctional Facility. He also reports experiencing retaliation after he challenged the denial of a newspaper called Socialist View. According to prison policy in both Alabama and South Carolina, rejected publications are supposed to go through a review process. If a publication is rejected, the prisoner and the sender are both supposed to receive a notice of rejection and given an opportunity to appeal the decision. In the majority of cases, however, the appeal is either ignored or the rejection upheld.
Willie and Mary Ratcliff, who acquired the Bay View from its founder, Muhammad Al-Kareem, emphasize that SFBV helps prisoners understand that they are not alone; it helps them connect their experiences to broader struggles, and effectively challenge the abuse they experience on a collective basis. Thus, the suppression and censorship of the paper not only affects individual subscribers, but the whole dynamic of collective communication, political education, and awareness inside the walls.
The reason why books, especially those on Black and radical history, are being censored is very clear: Education means the beginning of the demise of the prisons.
Shine White (Joseph Stewart), a prisoner in North Carolina, was recently transferred and placed in lockup for possession of a contraband cell phone. The actual reason for this punishment, however, is that Shine has been continuously making noise to keep those on the outside informed about what is going on behind the walls. Most recently, he had been calling for public investigation into the death of a prisoner in his facility.
Shine did what must be done: Blast the news to the outside.
The brutal retaliation he has since experienced is thus a form of censorship—an attack on our collective sense of reality and the stories that convey this reality. It is about denying and erasing our collective histories, identities, and lived experiences. Censorship is thought control. Prisoncrats are afraid that prisoners may learn the truth about their own lives and conditions. Thus, they must suppress the truth or any information that prisoners may use to act on it.
And though prisoncrats see books as a challenge to their authority and control, prison censorship is about more than book bans. It is about surveillance, policing, and the attempt to control our very thoughts, perceptions, and actions—on the inside and the outside! Censorship is driven by fear. It is a form of repression, and we must fight against it by refusing to be silent. We must resist these attempts to control our thoughts.