Prison Banned Books Week: Analyzing the North Carolina Ban List
A North Carolina prisoner writes: Dear comrades, I’ve enclosed a banned book/publications list put out by our prison.
I can’t get or make copies. Nobody can help me with copies. North Carolina prisons want all non-legal mail sent to Phoenix, MD for electronic scanning, that takes up to two weeks to be done. Yet legal mail, books and newsletters are sent to the prisons themselves. Any idea what a burden that is? Our people got to remember two different addresses. Organizations have to mail us letter replies to one address and books to another.
This prison blocks almost all sexual mags, even non-nude, even though NC-DAC policy approves such books. Not Harnett Correctional Institution.
Notice the date? This is the banned book list I was given in June 2024. Any book past a year is supposed to be re-reviewed. They aren’t.
Analyzing NC Ban List
Some famous titles on the list include Where the Crawdads Sing and the often-censored in U.$. schools, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Other notable items include multiple self-help books, including ones specifically for prisoners preparing for release, and prisoner resource lists. There are multiple legal resources on the list, one our comrade mentions. And there are books like Gender Studies, Qigong and Tai Chi, and an astrology book that can’t possibly violate any rules. Clearly censored for its political content is Our Enemies in Blue, a critique of policing.
Under Lock & Key is the second most censored newspaper in North Carolina, after The Final Call, which appears 14 times on the list (it also comes out a lot more frequently than ULK). Both are clearly censored for political reasons.
The book list that this comrade received in June 2024 is dated 10/06/2023. Since October 2023, the following items have been rejected by NCDPS: Under Lock & Key 82 and ULK 84, and a comrade reported not receiving Under Lock & Key 85. A prisoner appealed ULK 82, was denied, and then MIM Distributors appealed and it was removed from the Master List of Disapproved Publications. Most states have a central administrative office that oversees the local mailroom decisions to censor, so it is always worth appealing to these offices. There are no rights that you don’t fight for. Years ago many comrades went further and engaged in lawsuits over the mail in North Carolina, which seems to have brought improvements in their practices in recent years.
By our count, at least 100 of the 480 items on the ban list contain sexual content, most of them containing pornographic photos. While this comrade points out that sexual content is not a reason for banning per the law, North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections policy Chapter D 0.0109(f)(11) does prohibit “Sexually explicit material which by its nature or content poses a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution, or facilitates criminal activity.” It is not clear how any of the materials in question fit this criteria. Curiously, right after the release of this ban list, Under Lock & Key 79* was censored for the reason “naked woman’s breast”, which just isn’t true at all, but should also not have been allowed by their own rules.
The only topic to rival pornography on the ban list was “street novels.” We counted at least 100 examples on this list (we did not look up every title so these are likely undercounted). Most likely these are censored for (f)(10) related to promoting “gang activity.”
The third most common topic on the ban list appeared to be tattoo-related, with at least 20 examples. Other themes that appeared more than a few times, in order of frequency, included: art, history of famous criminals, cars, guns, survival, hacker, legal, and martial arts. Unfortunately we have no real information on the literature that was not put on the ban list to compare to.
According to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, there were 58 books banned in various school districts across North Carolina in 2023. While the news reports more on banned books in schools, we can see that banning literature is much more frequent in prisons. And while the titles on these two lists appear to have no overlap, the motivation behind most of the banned literature seems to be an effort to not expose people to books that depict things the censors don’t want them to do.
North Carolina’s Overall Rating
Overall, we have to give North Carolina a decent grade of C+ on their mail policies and practices.
It’s unacceptable that almost every issue of Under Lock & Key seems to either be censored, or at least not delivered to some subscribers in NCDAC. This includes the recent example where they censored ULK for art depicting actions that their department describes in their own rules. However, some subscribers in North Carolina have received every recent issue of Under Lock & Key. There has been a major improvement since 2012-2017 when censorship was so rampant in North Carolina that we couldn’t even get a letter in telling a prisoner what mail we’ve sent them.
And yes, the multiple addresses are a burden as our comrade says. Pennsylvania has three! You can see our list of mail censored in North Carolina prisons over the last couple years and see that even when newspapers and pamphlets were sent to the facility they were sometimes returned stating, “This facility DOES NOT accept friend and family mail directly.” And there were times where mail printed on 8.5”x11” paper was returned from TextBehind stating: Refused “TextBehind, INC does not process privileged/legal mail”. It is clear these systems are confusing to all involved.
Assuming those were honest mistakes, there hasn’t really been any censorship of books or pamphlets from MIM Distributors in recent years (just our newsletter), including some of our most censored literature in other states. And this would not likely be the case if it weren’t for the prisoners who fought censorship with appeals and lawsuits less than a decade ago.
