Book Censorship News, August 21, 2026

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Request Denied (Again): Navigating Prison Censorship from the Outside

by Aaron Blumberg

Organizations that provide books and other types of information to carceral institutions have existed for decades throughout the country. At their core, they share the mission of libraries everywhere—to bring information to those that seek it—but the paths they must navigate are fraught with a myriad of obstacles to overcome. These obstacles vary state-by-state, but they all boil down to some form of censorship.

In the first part of this series, banned or restricted materials policies were explored as a hindrance to carceral librarians being able to do their jobs properly. For books-to-prisons programs, law libraries, reference-by-mail providers, and higher education in prison programs, these policies are far more destructive to the “how” and “why” these programs exist. Though policies vary state-to-state, the purpose behind them remains rooted in restricting access to information.

Reasons to Restrict

The majority of material restrictions are considered content-based, being blocked for actual or perceived content—assumption-based rather than knowledge-based understanding of content. PEN America’s 2019 report, “Literature Locked Up,” provides the following non-exhaustive list of prohibited content:

Sexual content. nudity, or obscenity
Depictions of violence or language perceived to encourage it
Depictions of criminal activity or language perceived to encourage it
Depictions of escape or language perceived to encourage it
Encouragement of “group disruption” or anti-authority attitudes or actions
Racial animus or language perceived to encourage hatred

It is important to note another common reason to deny access to a publication, using the verbiage from the Florida Department of Corrections, “the publication otherwise presents a threat to the security, order, or rehabilitative objectives of the correctional system or the safety of any person.” This catch-all language exists in some form in most policies and often provides correctional institutions cover against legal challenges, as literature review committees and courts will typically uphold bans when “security” concerns are in play.

The other type of restriction, and one becoming more prevalent, is content-neutral. Under the guise of stemming the flow of illicit drugs and other contraband into the prison system, departments of corrections’ (DOC) policies include clauses that limit where and how materials can be purchased. In a 2023 comparative analysis of state DOC media review policies, Ithaka S+R writes that the limitations of being relegated to purchasing only from “approved” or “recognized” vendors or distributors—including in some cases only directly from a publisher—leads to complications and undue hardships for incarcerated readers and their families to procure materials for recreational and educational purposes.

Because of how these restrictions are presented under security reasoning, content-neutral bans are even less likely to be overturned when challenged.

The Struggles of Providing Books to Prisons

Books-to-prison (B2P) programs exist throughout the country. Some of these organizations serve only the region or state they are in, while others take on the daunting task of attempting to provide materials nationwide to anyone who sends in a request. As outside organizations, they often have their work cut out for them in facing and attempting to overcome various obstacles.

One of the major hurdles B2P organizations face is not being aware of restricted materials lists and restricted content policies. This lack of awareness is due to the non-transparent nature of many departments of corrections. These policies are not readily available on public-facing websites, often requiring further investigation and inquiry, including going as far as filing requests under the Freedom of Information Act. For those organizations serving multiple states, juggling and adhering to state policies can be burdensome and unruly.

In some states, like Pennsylvania, books go through multiple screenings before hopeful delivery to the intended destination. Items are first sent to a central location to be screened for contraband before being routed to the institutional mailroom where the recipient is housed. Mailroom staff at those institutions are then charged with content review to ensure adherence to policy.

Jodie Lincoln of the Pittsburgh Prison Project explained that the Project ships bulk packages to the Security Processing Center (SPC) that tests the books for drugs and other types of contraband before being sent to institutional mailrooms throughout the state. While this lowers costs for the Project, it comes at the detriment of being able to track individual item(s) from start to finish. When asked about tracking materials from the organization to the recipient, Lincoln answered:

It’s a black hole unless you’re talking directly to a person. Your loved one could find out if they got the book or not, and then they can inquire. But in this kind of [books to prisoners] project, there’s not really that. We’re not tracking what books we’re sending to individual people, right? They just go in the package. We have their name in the database and when it got mailed, but yeah, it’s the ‘black hole’ that is a kind of big question.

This “black hole” is something many other organizations also deal with on a regular basis. State policies vary on how rejected items are handled once rejected, including who is supposed to be notified that an item has been rejected (whether that’s the sender, intended recipient, publisher, etc.). Some policies require items be returned to sender, with or without reason; some allow the intended recipient the option of shipping the item(s) to their loved one, at their own expense; and/or some choose destruction of the prohibited materials, often through incineration (and you thought book burning was a thing of the past). This past July, a bookstore in South Carolina filed a federal lawsuit against the South Carolina Department of Corrections for willfully destroying books intended for an incarcerated recipient.

An example of a nonprofit that must navigate a multitude of prison policies is the Women’s Prison Book Project (WPBP). They send books to incarcerated populations in more than 30 states, “serving incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people across the U.S.” for over 30 years. As a volunteer-led organization, keeping track of whether the over 20,000 books a year they ship out actually make their way into the hands of the requestor is unrealistic. However, WPBP does keep track of what books do get returned, from what institutions, and for what reason (if any are given). The reason stated for the return of many of the books they have sent is simply “refused (no reason).” For those with stated reasons, they are often rejected for content-neutral reasons such as: “unauthorized sender,” “no old, used books,” and “no books except the bible.” This last reason is courtesy of a form letter that accompanied a rejected/returned item from a state prison in Arkansas, where the state temporarily delayed implementing the “strictest [prison] book ban in the country.”

Legal Research and Reference by Mail

Even outside organizations that provide pages of information and answers to legal or reference questions deal with restrictions. Law libraries often provide legal research services to the incarcerated. Prison mail policies often restrict the number of pages that can be sent into a facility, and for anyone familiar with caselaw, you know just how many pages any one case can encompass. Content policies can also dictate whether certain cases can be made available to an incarcerated individual. Incomplete, delayed, or censored legal research can actively hinder the efforts of jailhouse lawyers, “incarcerated individuals who teach themselves the law to advocate for themselves and the rights of their peers.”

Libraries and nonprofits that provide reference services to incarcerated individuals also come up against pushback from institutional mailrooms. The Prison Library Support Network (PLSN) is an “information-based collective founded in 2015 to support incarcerated people.” Members of this collective are librarians, students, advocates, and activists who, along with other organizational projects, provide reference-by-mail services. Like with law libraries, page restrictions and content policies are a constant challenge, but a new reason for rejection has emerged.

A longtime member of PLSN and academic librarian shared that mailrooms are trying to reject the information they provide on the basis of copyright infringement. Understanding copyright law is an arduous endeavor; however, for someone in academia, knowledge of the fair use doctrine is commonplace. In the case of the reference services offered by PLSN, Section 107 of the Copyright Act allows for the fair use of copyrighted materials for the explicit purposes of teaching, scholarship, and research. Unfortunately, attempts to push back against the “rejected due to copyright” reasoning have yet to yield positive results.

The Challenges of Offering HEP

Higher education in prison (HEP) programs provide the incarcerated with opportunities to further their education through paper correspondence courses, asynchronous coursework via prison tablet systems, and face-to-face instruction from university professors. An increasing number of colleges and universities are creating programs to bring associate, bachelor, master, and even the rare doctoral degree programs behind bars. These programs work in partnership with correctional systems, adhering to a non-binding agreement to cooperate known as a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

These MOUs provide an outline of what is expected from both parties in the establishment and running of HEP programs. And as with anything involving corrections, security concerns take precedence, including adherence to material restrictions and prior approval for any materials to be brought inside for classes. Schools providing classes submit syllabi with lists of books that will need to be brought in as part of the curricula. For programs offering classes that also exist on main campuses, the required readings are identical. However, if any of the titles are currently banned by the prison or if the content violates policy, they are rejected. For a college class, a rejected book(s) means potentially cancelling an offered class or fundamentally changing it if a non-offensive replacement cannot be found. Due to the precarious position HEP programs are in because of the nature of MOUs, they often must pick and choose what battles they wage for fear of dissolution.

Ashton Klekamp, Policy and Research Director of the Education Justice Project (EJP), shared with me an event of such blatant censorship that the program could not just sit idly by and allow it to go unchallenged. Some background: EJP maintains a collection of books within the prison for the purposes of class-assigned readings. These books have gone through the approval process and have been cleared for residence within the library. Students of the program are trained to be “community librarians” who are tasked with managing the library. One day in 2019, EJP was notified that their library “had been covered in crime scene tape, and that they [DOC staff] had removed over 200 books.” When an inventory was conducted, it became clear that this was a “targeted removal of books that were related to race, identity, social justice, social movements”—what would be a “canary in the coalmine” moment for current attempts to ban these topics throughout the country.

Internal conversations at EJP led to the decision to escalate and they contacted other HEP programs who were also dealing with similar issues of censorship, making it clear that this was an across-the-board concern. Application of publication review policies were differing from facility to facility. Where EJP was denied approval of a book, other programs were approved for use, making it “clear that it was a statewide problem and that it really needed a statewide solution.” This statewide solution meant taking this issue to the legislative body of Illinois, providing testimony, and pushing for and succeeding at amending the policy. The policy has been further amended multiple times since 2019. Transcripts of testimony, including a list of removed materials and policy as it was written during this time can be accessed via the EJP website.

Even with—or perhaps due to—continual policy amendments, the number of banned publications has increased, including a large jump just within the past three years. Klekamp has seen no real commitment from the department of corrections to seek input from HEP providers, publishers, and others to fix what is ultimately a broken policy and system. She believes, as do many others, that HEP programs should have control over their syllabi and materials because they are the academic experts. A “common sense” idea in a place where common sense often takes a back burner to “security concerns,” especially as it pertains to censorship.

The war on prison censorship continues on various fronts, and luckily support is ever growing as the battles become more known through advocacy groups, legal challenges, and legislative efforts making their way to the mainstream media.

The final piece of this three-part series will explore state and federal legislation pertaining to prison censorship, and the selective application of anti-censorship efforts.

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