Va. Prisons See Books As Insurmountable Security Risks

Anyone who’s read The Autobiography of Malcolm X understands that, aside from religion and maybe weight benches, perhaps the most visceral positive influence in prison is access to literature: As this Washington Post article points out, sometimes, amid the boredom and routine of incarceration, inmates decide “there’s a lot of words I just don’t know.” And access to books is pretty much the only amendment to this concern (Malcolm Little copied an entire dictionary, word for word, during years in lockup).

Around the country, there are programs — some championed by former White house advisers — devoted to getting books into prison. But in Virginia, one of these programs — the Quest Institute’s Books Behind Bars program — is maybe too successful. Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, says the DOC is shutting the program down. Here’s what he told the Post:

“…the decision was made after a banned item or items made their way into prison in books provided by Quest. [Traylor] would not provide details, saying it is a security issue. But he said officials worry that someone trying to smuggle an item to an inmate could use Books Behind Bars to do it.

“[Traylor] would not provide details, saying it is a security issue” = horseshit. Then he gets to this:

“Because Quest sent books directly to offenders and utilized volunteers to send these books, there was nothing in place to stop someone from attempting to introduce contraband to an offender by secreting it in a book,” Traylor wrote in an e-mail.

Which makes no sense. Especially when factored with Kay Allison’s comments. Allison is 78 and the owner of Quest Bookshop in downtown Charlottesville. She says:

“…volunteers, who search the books before they are shipped, overlooked two items this spring — a compact disc packaged in a text book and a paperclip. She said both were found by corrections workers, who examine each package that enters the prison, before they made it into a prisoner’s hands. She argues that those two mistakes should not justify killing the program.

She’s right. Fix the program, don’t destroy it.

The DOC’s extended argument is that if nonprofit organizations want to send books to prisoners, they should send them to libraries. But fundamental texts — any classic or religious text of your choosing, for example, and also dictionaries and reference materials — should be available to everyone, especially inmates, to own, to mark up, to sift through at leisure. I realize part of anyone’s criminal incarceration is supposed to be a fundamental lack of rights, but for book programs, a lack of rights just seems petty.