The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has never had a stellar reputation. It is known for executing more people than Oliver Cromwell and requiring the Supreme Court to intercede with a 2002 decision before it would stop giving lethal injection to those with mental disabilities. Last month, Eric Dexheimer of the Austin American-Statesman published a story about banned books in Texas prisons that adds to the department’s lofty resume. The story reveals that practice of banning books in Texas prisons is extensive, arbitrary and byzantine.
According to Dexheimer, officials ban books to “protect the safety and security of our institution.” With this in mind, some works by Dave Barry and John Grisham are kept out of inmates’ hands. I understand keeping “Mein Kampf,” “The Anarchist Cookbook” and “How to Break Out of Huntsville” out of prisons. But Dave Barry and John Grisham? It is as if officials are taking contraband directives from Amazon.com’s “Recommended Reading” for 45-year-old suburbanites. Jon Stewart’s “America: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” was censored for “sexually explicit” pictures. I own this book, and the only sexually explicit image I found is a photoshopped montage of nude Supreme Court justices.
Not all of the ongoing censorship is harmlessly absurd; the department’s approach toward homosexual literature is disgusting. Books used to be banned if they “encourage[d] homosexual or deviant criminal sexual behavior.” Fortunately the “homosexuality” stipulation was removed ... in 2007. It is as if the department thinks prison-rape occurred because Big Mike read Andre Gide and Oscar Wilde before heading to the showers.
Not only is this banning approach bigoted, it is also counterproductive. Many technical manuals about auto-repair, circuitry and other mechanics are not allowed. Vocational education is one of the primary roads to employment after incarceration. Discouraging prisoners’ ability to learn these skills hurts their opportunities for employment upon release, which exponentially increases the likelihood of recidivism.
The process of banning these books is far from scientific. According to Dexheimer, upon receiving a book, a prison employee checks to see if it is already banned. If it is not, the employee will quickly scan the back cover summary for key words and pictures, based on which the employee can disqualify the book.
An inmate is free to appeal a book’s disqualification, but because the inmate will not have initial access to the book, he or she may not know to protest it. To cap it off, there is not even conclusive evidence that exposure to obscene literature has any impact on inmates.
This process of banning books is absurd. Our government should encourage literacy as much as possible, not deny inmates the right to read Nobel laureates or learn vital skills. The public and government need to pressure the department to evaluate this system and start to advocate literacy.
Luippold is a journalism and government junior.
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