Under Lock & Key

We hope those who have been following our series of articles this week have been both angered by what is going on inside U.$. prisons and inspired to action. (see campaign link below to read previous articles)

MIM(Prisons) is in a period of growth, after some setbacks. In recent years we’ve gradually reinstated our 3 different levels of correspondence study courses for prisoners. Just this summer we put out a long-planned Reference Guide that contains historical timelines, maps and a glossary to provide background for many of the things we talk about regularly. We’ve released the Revolutionary 12 Steps Program and Power To New Afrika, both written by prisoners, in the last couple years. We continue to put out Under Lock & Key every three months. And we’ve updated a number of other study packs and resources. And we do it all out of our own pockets and volunteer time. So if you can spare some money or some time to support us it can go a long way.

By the time this series of articles reaches most of our readers inside, in Under Lock & Key 87, the holiday season will be approaching. In that spirit and inspired by all this talk about banned books, we are pledging to mail out more books this winter than any other winter in the 2020s so far!

Please see our get involved page for ways to donate and other ways to help out. Outside supporters can help us make this happen by sending cash or stamps, helping acquire in demand books like dictionaries, Black Panther Party, or Marxist classics, or by volunteering in various ways. All of the new publications listed above have been censored in various prisons, even the Reference Guide was censored in Michigan’s Thumb Correctional Facility for being more than 12 pages long! So continued campaigning and legal support is much needed.

Prisoners can help us get more books out by taking the steps to join our Serve the People Free Political Books to Prisoners Program. Get others to sign up for a subscription to ULK or become a distributor of ULK in your prison. Let us know what organizing work you are doing, what your local study group is discussing, what questions are coming up for you and your comrades. By doing these things you can receive books to help with your local work and studies. We have books on Black/New Afrikan studies, Chican@ studies, First Nation studies, gender, economics, history of Chinese socialism, the Soviet Union, books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and more.

As a person who has been the target of long-standing censorship campaigns, i would like to give my voice to the discussion around censorship in this time of organizing against this tool of counter-insurgency.

Recently, in Texas’ prison system, an anthology that speaks to the torture of solitary confinement was censored. The reason given is that it purportedly contains content that threatens the security of the prison by encouraging prisoners to engage in disruptive behavior such as strikes, etc. i took part in this anthology and to be clear there is not any language speaking to the disruption of the prison system. There is language that speaks to the dismantling of long-term/indefinite solitary confinement, which is illegal in many places, is considered torture internationally, and which the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) itself admits may cause harm or damage to the mental health of the affected person. So the thinking of the thought police is that it is a threat to security to speak out against torture, but it is not a threat to security to maintain torturous conditions. What sense does that make?

This censorship is of the second volume of this anthology series called Texas Letters (see: texasletters.org). Volume one, which contains the same sort of content from many of the same writers, is approved. So what happened between the time of January 2023 and May of 2024, the respective release of each volume? A one word answer: Success. The first volume was released at the beginning of the last state legislature session. A session where a coalition of people were behind House Bill 812 (HB812), a bill intended to end indefinite solitary confinement. As a way to increase the popularity of the bill the book was distributed to all the law makers. Ultimately the bill didn’t pass, however the promotion of the direct letters and experiences of those incarcerated in solitary confinement in Texas grew. The prolific female writer Kwaneta Harris, who has been in solitary confinement for years, was featured in various high profile publications including The New York Times, speaking to the experience of solitary confinement in Texas, particularly how it is in prisons designated for women. Al-Jazeera and NPR featured interviews on the book and the experiences of Texas solitary confinement. Advocates continue to build momentum and public opinion against the use of solitary Confinement, and it is upon this back drop that when Texas Letters Volume 2 appeared, it was censored throughout the state prison system.

This is a move tyrants use to quell social discourse; to control the narrative and therefore evolution of the system never comes. This is a move to quell any form of resistance. Even that which is peaceful becomes a “threat to the security of the institution”, those who take part in such actions become “threats to the security of the institution” people known for “organizing and influencing other inmates” and therefore are confined in solitary confinement or held in said confinement if already there.

This process of events is no surprise. It is a reflection of the practices coming out of the highest level of government in the state, directly a representation of the tyrannical regime Greg Abbot desires and runs himself.

See, in Texas, the Executive Director of TDCJ is appointed by the Governor, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice is also appointed by the governor, as is the parole and pardons board. The Director’s Review Committee (DRC) is the body that governs censorship inside the prisons. This committee is appointed by the Director. So what We end up with is a DRC of political appointees, appointed by a political appointee, a gang of political careerists, all kissing the ring of the top man, the governor of Texas, all falling in line with his neo-confederate agenda. As such We have a prison system that is over saturated with Christian fundamentalism, stale reforms, faith-based programs, and because any volunteer program has to go through the chaplaincy department there is no secular, dissident voices, programs or activities. All because TDCJ is in the business of cultivating ZOMBIES, those who talk when and how they’re told, walk when and how they’re told, think when and how they’re told. This is considered reform and anything outside of that is a threat to security worthy of censorship.

This type of tyranny should be important to everyone because We should want to stop this sort of government over-reach before it becomes too extreme. Tyranny only becomes emboldened with time and a lack of resistance of its subjects.

I am lucky this far to have received my mail [including many newspapers, study packs and books from MIM Distributors], but the tablets are soon to arrive. As far as books go, I am unable to order any as there seems to be some type of mystery in that realm. No books until further notice, and nobody appears to be able to guide you in the proper direction.

Their goal seems to be to stop the flow of contraband into the prison. Yet, there seems to be more of it than food on your tray. People are falling out and sent right back to the place they came out of to be back in the same shape they left in: on drugs. They appear to do nothing about the problem. A person on drugs can walk right past an officer and he acts as if he doesn’t see him. The smell of something on fire stays in the air. You are forced to sleep in a room with unbearable smoke fumes in the air. All they want is for the alarm to not go off. Smoke bailing out of some buildings isn’t that something.

Yes, we’re going to have to accept the tablets because they can solve the problem of unbearable conditions - or so they say!

MIM(Prisons) adds: Despite word from prisoners in Tennessee that there are new restrictions on books coming in, we have not been able to confirm the new rules. We have heard from other Books for Prisoners programs that they have stopped sending books to Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Corrections’ website hosts the Inmate Mail policy dated 8 December 2023, which states:

“Printed materials may be received by inmates in an unlimited amount, provided they are mailed directly from the publisher(s) or recognized commercial distributor.”

Despite some censorship, and mail gone missing, MIM Distributors has been able to deliver books to TN prisoners prior to December 2023. And lately our biggest problem has been with Tennessee rejecting manila envelopes because they think they might harbor drugs!

As we’ve reported in Texas and elsewhere, drugs in prisons have risen to all-time highs, despite Covid-19 restrictions on visitations and new digital mail policies. And science has proven that drug addiction is a product of bad living conditions. So not only are prison staff bringing in drugs, they are driving prisoners to use them through their repressive and alienating conditions.

As we approach the end of Prison Banned Book Week we are pausing our campaign, which has been going on over the last couple months, to support prisoners in Pendleton Correctional Facility, Indiana. Supporters should stop gathering signatures and mail out any remaining postcards soon.

It was reported to MIM(Prisons) that 6 prisoners were threatened with drug charges, and torture in long-term isolation, for mail received from MIM Distributors. The mailroom claimed smudges of ink (that were obviously from the printer) were indications that the mail was laced with drugs. Of course, subsequent testing of the mail proved there were no drugs on them. This type of treatment has earned Indiana state a grade of D for their mail censorship, not an F because most letters do get through as does some literature.

In response to these threats, comrades in Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support (AIPS) and other supporters hit the streets with a postcard campaign. We told people about what was going on, and asked them to sign a postcard and mail it to the administration. The postcards called out the political repression and demanded that it be stopped. Dozens of postcards were mailed to the Pendleton Administration, from near and far away, over the last couple months.

In the midst of the postcard campaign we received news that the threats had seemingly been dropped. But censorship has continued and a lawsuit is still being pursued. One of the comrades targeted at Pendleton says:

“I have not received Under Lock & Key 86 mailed out [1 month ago]. I’ve written the mailroom 2 times now and as of today have not received it.”

Ey did receive our article on the postcard campaign, which has been copied and distributed around the prison. Ey says:

“Thank you all for bringing this injust to light!”

Thanks to the comrades on the outside who supported this campaign. We are declaring this phase over, but will continue to report on the happenings in Indiana prisons.

Outreach Report

In one locale, over 35 petitions were collected alongside distributing ULK 86 directly to passerbys. There was substantial immediate enthusiasm for discovering a publication written by prisoners, especially regarding solidarity with Palestine. Each persyn AIPS met was interested both in receiving a newsletter as well as signing a petition to mail.

AIPS also maintained a presence at Socialism Conference 2024 which took place in Chicago during the end of August. Here, over 100 copies of ULK were handed out and dozens of postcard petitions were signed by those interested in the struggle of prisoners. It was also encouraging to see those on the outside were interested in learning about the abuses and injustices prisoners face, either through panels attending hosted at the conference or by talking directly with passerbys.

While there was no negative reception, no recipients in either location were familiar with ULK or MIM(Prisons). Only very few recognized the MIM name from prior exposure. It is indicative of a low tide in the movement here that most are completely unfamiliar with anti-imperialist prisoners. This represents an opportunity and responsibility to publicize our work and recruit more volunteers.

Among this small sample of the public, found tabling in busy urban areas, at local leftist events, or at the aforementioned conference, there were multiple people who were very enthusiastic about the newspaper and our work in spite of lacking all prior familiarity. This welcome enthusiasm also resulted in some “pig questions”: those which, if AIPS answered publicly, would inevitably feed valuable information to the pigs (in other words, agents of the state). The size of a political group, their location, and their leadership structure are examples of questions unnecessary to answer in order to work with others. That information only helps enemies who wish to study, surveil or even infiltrate anti-imperialist organizations. And we don’t say this to pretend that we are a big organization but rather to encourage people to do the work that they see as the most correct.

AIPS comrades encountered some popular confusion about MIM(Prisons)’s line on (non)exploitation of prisoners. Some people thought MIM(Prisons) was fighting against the for-profit prison system. Most prisons are not private. And even companies like JPay, Securus, and GTL that are profiteering off prisoners are making very small amounts of money compared to the cost of running the criminal injustice system, which the Prison Policy Institute put at about $182 billion. MIM(Prisons)’s actual line is that prisons are an immense cost to Amerika: a cost sustained for the purpose of social control, especially for the national oppression of First Nation, New Afrikan and Chican@ liberation movements. In the end, this cost is worthwhile if Amerika is able to prevent the masses of oppressed nations from fighting for autonomy in land and resources. But still, the benefits yielded are not profits in terms of capital but the containment and suppression of the internal semi-colonies within the United $tates. Imprisonment is a form of absolute immiseration that we think of in the realm of genocide rather than exploitation. The suppression of rebellious groups helps the settler Amerikan nation maintain its position on top. AIPS incorporates this understanding in our prisoner correspondence and campaign work.

The Florida Department of Corrections has been on a censorship tirade, which serves as a nice compliment to their habit of banning books.(1). The FDOC has a rule (Section 15 of 33-501.401) which authorizes the impoundment or rejection of any publication which “depicts how to make an instrument to apply a tattoo … describes tattooing techniques … or contains a tattoo pattern or photograph …”

ULK’s have been censored because certain pages “Could be used as tattoo patterns.” That is, the FDOC has the right to censor any publication which contains anything which could possibly serve as a pattern for a tattoo, and whether it could be a tattoo pattern is up to their discretion. Their censorship “rules” say “censor whatever you want!”

Not a single one of our publications has ever listed tattoo patterns. We print the art that prisoners send us, and images that help express the articles they accompany. We have a recommendation for the FDOC: prisoners could use their cell bars as tattoo patterns. How about you remove them?

In the last four years, of all the prison systems where we’ve sent 10 or more books, Florida has the highest rate of censorship at about 30% of books or pamphlets (excluding our newsletter and letters to prisoners). Meanwhile only 26% of books we’ve sent to Florida in that time have been confirmed received by the prisoner. The week before Prison Banned Books Week, JPay returned some articles we printed and mailed to a reader after many publications we sent were censored. JPay enclosed FDOC censorship forms in each envelope that were not filled, therefore not providing any justification for returning our mail. We give Florida a grade of D for their mail policies and practices. They are one of the worst, but not as bad as states that block any piece of mail we send in.

We will continue to be censored so long as we reveal the oppression in the United $nakes. We will fight it until the oppressed have been liberated.

1: Patricia Mazzei, 22 April 2023, “Florida at Center of Debate as School Book Bans Surge Nationally”, The New York Times

There are 65 organizations who have signed on to the 2024 Prison Banned Books Week campaign. What unites us is a belief that there is good in lifting the restrictions on literature that U.$. prisoners have access to. Without having asked all of the participants, we’d wager that we all agree that by understanding the past and understanding the ideas of others, that people can better understand our present and act on it in a way that benefits humynity overall. There are certain ideas that we may take from the Age of the Enlightenment that we all share.

Finding Truth in Books

Where many of the organizations in this campaign probably disagree with us is in seeing that each piece of literature has a class character to it. As part of our world view as Marxists, in a class society, we recognize class character in everything that humyns create.

There is an adage that the truth is hidden in books. But as we’ve discussed before, not all books are true or based in materialist science.(1) In a sense, we go to the library and read books to bury the lies within books and all around us. We must understand different arguments and ways of thinking in order to see their accuracy or fallacy.

Rather than think of the “marketplace of ideas” where a bunch of people bring their individual thoughts to compete with others (the individualist view), we see a war between two main class positions in the realm of ideas (and elsewhere) – that of the bourgeoisie vs. that of the proletariat. There is a reason why prisoners are the most restricted readers in this country, and why New Afrikan, Indigenous and Chican@ literature are targeted as “Security Threat Group” material.

Cultural Revolution

If there is one phenomenon that defines Maoism, it is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China (1966-1976) and the lessons learned from it. But wait, didn’t they like burn books and punish academics during the GPCR?

In essence, the GPCR was an unleashing of almost a billion people to participate in the war between the proletarian and the bourgeois lines in politics and production. Not only that, this was a people that were more than 90% illiterate before the liberation of China by the Communist Party in 1949.

“My conclusion… was that China had made greater progress in liberating masses of people from illiteracy and bringing millions some knowledge of scientific and industrial technique than any nation had ever done in so short a time.

“…By 1960… about $2,600,000,000) was devoted to education and science, or fifty percent more than the direct budgetary military expenditure….

“In 1960 United States expenditure on education at all levels was less than four percent of the national income, or slightly less than the $18,000,000,000 Americans spent for alcoholic beverages and tobacco.

“In 1957 Premier Chou En-lai had estimated illiteracy over the whole country at seventy percent. Mr Tsui said that by 1960 the percentage had been reduced… to about sixty-six percent for the rural areas and twenty-four percent in the cities.”(2)

By 1979, three years after the GPCR, illiteracy was down to 30%.(3) Yet the GPCR is known in the United $tates for shutting down schools and attacking professors. These things were central to the student struggles on campuses across China. And in these struggles there were Red Guard factions taking up different positions and political lines, fighting against each other. Students were challenging the hierarchical roles in the university and the traditional methods of study, without always having the answers. There are even documented cases of Red Guards burning religious books as a means of attacking reactionary ideas. But this was not a coordinated effort by the state as is happening in prisons and schools across the United $tates today, the so-called “land of the free”. We can see parallels to the critiques of the Chinese student movement in the United $tates today where “right to an education” is being used to silence protests against U.$. arms being used for a genocide in Palestine.

Interestingly, after praising Chinese literacy in the quote above, Edgar Snow quotes a U.$. Library of Congress staffer stating that the Chinese concept of education “is not distinguishable from indoctrination, propaganda and agitation.”(2) This is where we would again stress the class perspective, and how propaganda is in the eye of the beholder:

“Westerners perceive Chinese education under Mao as”propaganda,” because it encourages values and goals which contradict the goals of capitalism. These values and goals taught in China during the Cultural Revolution were consistent with the building of socialism. Education in Western nations is not perceived as “propaganda” by those who, consciously or not, agree with the goals of capitalism/imperialism and patriarchy. Similarly, advertising for capitalist products, while recognized as very influential on people’s opinions and actions, is not perceived as “brain-washing” by those who benefit from capitalism and have therefore decided to tolerate it.”(4)

The totalitarian control or corporations like Global Tel*Link, JPay, and Securus over what prisoners read, write, listen to and communicate with people outside is a good example of what our society accepts.

Allyn and Adele Ricket wrote about their experience as prisoners in China for providing intelligence to the United $tates Government. This is one of the best accounts of the Chinese socialist approach to education/re-education. They were imprisoned during the early years of the revolution and witnessed the change in approach, partially due to changing conditions (the new government had been established and prisoners were less rebellious) and partially due to lessons learned. “By 1953… the authorities acknowledged that their former overemphasis on suppression had been a mistake.”(5)

Their description of staff at their prison sounds unbelievable to a U.$. prisoner:

“he always seemed to have time to listen to the troubles of one or another of the prisoners or to do countless little things which showed how serious he was in looking out for the welfare of his charges.”

At first Allyn Rickett thought this was a bit of a propaganda show, but this incident changed eir mind:

“I looked through the crack in the palisade built around our cell window to obstruct the view. There was Supervisor Shen patiently going along the line turning every article of the prisoners’ clothing to make certain they would be dry by the time we were to take them in after supper.”(6)

Regarding censorship, the Ricketts also compare the news in China over time and to the Amerikan press:

“Publication of news is determined by its usefulness in increasing the people’s social consciousness and morality and furthering the Communist Party’s program for the development of the country. Therefore the content of the news is limited to what the authorities feel will serve these ends.

“To our mind, no matter how sincere in their purpose the authorities may be, in violating the principle of the right to know they are taking a dangerous step. …One of the most encouraging recent developments in China has been a liberalization of this concept of a controlled press. [written in 1957]

“…Our experience in living in and reading the press of both countries has led us to the conclusion that the Chinese today are still receiving a clearer picture of what is happening here than the American people are of what is taking place in China.”(7)

Ten years later the GPCR will begin and “big character posters” were promoted as a way for the masses to express their grievances against Party officials, or other issues they faced. The Chinese experiment in socialism was unique in how it regularly attempted to open up mass participation in ideological struggle and in organizing society as far as could be tolerated without creating chaos. And even then there was some chaos, which is what the GPCR is usually criticized for.

The press is a battleground for class struggle. In a condition where all the books were bourgeois, the socialist government had a lot of work to do to catch up. And this was done largely in face-to-face study groups, whether on campuses, on farms or in prisons.

The ideas of the old system must be surpassed, but not erased. Marx showed how different economic systems gave birth to subsequent systems, and how the ideas evolved to reflect those new systems. This is all important to the understanding of humyn history and to the development and continued advancement of humyn knowledge.

<sup>Notes: 1. Melo X, August 2022, Are Ideas in a Book Materialist?, Under Lock & Key 79.
2. Snow, Edgar, 1970, Red China Today, Random House: New York, pp.229-231.
3. MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT POSITION PAPER ON VIOLENCE, PART II, 26 August 1992
4. MC5, November 1999, Myths About Maoism.
5. Ricket, Allyn & Adele, 1973, Anchor Books: New York, p.235.
6. Ibid., p.236-7
7. Ibid., p.331</sup>

Yesterday we published a recent prison book ban list from North Carolina. Today we will analyze and publish a banned literature list from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.

The state of Pennsylvania holds around 40,000 people in its prisons, compared to 30,000 in North Carolina. Yet Pennsylvania has only 398 currently banned titles compared to North Carolina’s 480. The Pennsylvania list is not refreshed each year, with some items being banned as far back as 2012, so it seems that overall North Carolina bans more books/publications. Across Pennsylvania school districts there were 186 banned books in 2022/2023 school year. Again, we see that prisons are banning more literature than schools are.

There is a lot of overlap between Pennsylvania and North Carolina’s lists. Pennsylvania seems more aggressive in banning sexual content, which accounted for at least 130 of the 398 titles on their list. (Note: On both lists we do not have reasons for the censorship, and we did not confirm the actual content of each item.) Unlike North Carolina, we did not see any “street novels” or “urban fiction” on the Pennsylvania list, so this was the biggest difference, perhaps accounting for the shorter list. Street novels rival pornography on the North Carolina ban list.

The Pennsylvania list also differs in that it lists titles that were permitted after being reviewed. There were 664 titles that were listed as permitted, giving greater insight into how they implement their rules.

Like North Carolina, Tattoo books/magazines were often banned, along with topics like art, guns, hacking, drugs and martial arts. Pennsylvania had more prisoner advocacy related materials on their ban list (like Prison Health News), as well as newspapers that cater to prisoners. They also had more reference books and business related books for some reason (like Legal Forms for Starting and Owning Your Own Business). The obvious political motivations of censorship come through in items like Stop Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color and Trans People of Color.

While North Carolina seemed to only target The Final Call and Under Lock & Key there is a much broader list of newspapers that have certain issues banned in Pennsylvania. At the top of that list are The San Francisco Bayview, Workers World, and Under Lock & Key. Other than Under Lock & Key itself, there were no other items on the ban list that MIM Distributors distributes to prisoners, though some were on the permitted list. This mostly conforms with our records that show Under Lock & Key is almost the only thing that has been noted as censored or not received in recent years. The one item that shows up on our list a couple times for Pennsylvania censorship is our Maoist Glossary. As mentioned previously, most of our mail is never confirmed received or not.

Digital Mail Makes Physical Mail Harder

Censorship is challenging to track in the state of Pennsylvania. By law, authorities are required to send us notice of any censorship when it does occurs, but in practice this is uncommon if not rare. The overwhelming majority of our censorship cases in PA consist of mail simply disappearing in the system. What makes tracking censorship so challenging is that this missing mail includes letters that we send prisoners detailing the history of mail we’ve sent to them and when we sent it. Sometimes we have to resort to mailing the cellmates of the prisoners we were trying to contact. It’s amazing how well anger at the police can be communicated just through handwriting.

The fact that Pennsylvania seems to be quietly censoring our glossary aligns with the fact that their tablets provided through GTL do not offer any dictionaries among the 8805 titles available. Only 112 books are free on those tablets. These numbers are from Freedom of Information Act research by prisonbannedbooksweek.org, which also reveals that PA has a contract for $50,000,000.00 with GTL that includes kickbacks for “all annual revenues for music, e-messaging, games, lobby deposit fees and ebooks up to $4,350,000” at 22.5%. While kickbacks are interesting, note that at best the state is getting about 8% of the money back that they are giving to GTL to run their prison tablets. State bureaurcrats are motivated to balance budgets, but it’s not like the state is making money on this deal. It is only GTL that is walking away with profits, not the state, and definitely not the families of prisoners who are paying exorbitant fees for these services. The comrade who sent us this ban list wrote:

“I bought this GTL tablet model number TG0802 in January of 2019 for damn near $160.00. But since ViaPath took over GTL a year ago or so, the price has dropped down to $80. But these are refurbished tablets. When I get released I will send it back to the company via the form paying only shipping and handling. Then you get a brand new one without all the D.O.C. settings and restrictions on them… Every song I bought will be on it too.”

It is nice that they have an option to allow you to keep your purchases after release from prison, but we wouldn’t recommend keeping a tablet with a cellular data reciever, camera, GPS and microphone on it from Global Tel*Link after your release.

Thanks to the new digital mail system, Pennsylvania DOC now has three different addresses to send mail to requiring one to identify the type of mail as either General Incoming Correspondence, Photographs, Publications, Photo Books, Official Documents, Original Transactional Documentation, Legal Mail (which can be either “For Attorneys” or “For Courts/Court Entity”), or Miscellaneous.

Under Lock & Key 83 is the only recent issue on the “DENIED” list in Pennsylvania for the reason “Information contained on page 15 speaks of rising up against authority.” Yet every recent issue has been censored for some prisoners, showing that this ban list is only a piece of the censorship going on in Pennsylvania. In recent years this censorship is a combination of mail just gone missing as mentioned above, or mail returned and stamped “REFUSED: Go to WWW.COR.PA.GOV”, implying that we are not following the mail rules. But when you go to their website, the mail rules clearly state that newspapers go to the facility, and many PA prisoners receive them this way. But alas some mailroom supervisors disagree with the rules.

Despite all these confusing hoops that prison mail must go through, like elsewhere, drugs are more widespread than ever in Pennsylvania prisons. Rampant drug use and censored books and letters are just two of many indications of the failure of U.$. prisons to do anything positive for society.

I am a prisoner at Menard Correctional Center in Illinois. There is a ban here on used books. All books have to be new, and any organization that sends free books to prisoners can’t send them to Menard.

The other issue at Menard is the restrictions on the tablets. There is no phone or any access to reading case law on the tablets. Instead they offer streaming, music, game center, GTL podcasts and GTL newsfeed, and old movies and television. None of this is any help to prisoners here at Menard.

MIM(Prisons) adds: There is nothing in Illinois DOC Publication Reviews Directive that requires books be new, so this appears to be a practice specific to this facility. Menard Correctional Center is a maximum security facility that has been notorious for its use of long-term isolation and other abuses over the years. This practice of adding restrictions on books to people in segregation is all too common in this country where prisons aim to punish and not rehabilitate.

Companies like Global Tel*Link (GTL) (as well as Securus, CenturyLink Public Communications, Advanced Technologies Group, and Keefe Commissary Group) offer hundreds, if not thousands, of free books available on their tablets from Project Gutenberg, meaning these books are majority 95+ years old. So it is little surprise that they are lacking in practical information that prisoners in Illinois need.

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.

Today is the first day of Prison Banned Books Week 2024 (PBBW). This year the campaign will be focusing on how companies selling tablet services to the state have exacerbated the problem of censorship in prisons. MIM(Prisons) is one of dozens of organizations participating in PBBW. You can view the full list at prisonbannedbooksweek.org, where you can send letters to your legislators and letters to the editor to call on prisons to allow donated books from organizations like ours, as well as free digital books through local libraries. Also look for #prisonbannedbooksweek on various social media platforms this week.

Each day this week we will be publishing stories related to censorship in prisons, and we ask our supporters to share them with your networks using the hashtag #prisonbannedbooksweek. Censorship in prisons has been at the heart of what we do since day one and is a daily struggle for us and for our readers, as we must fight for our First Amendment rights in this country. We will give you an overview of what this looks like in this first installment for PBBW.

We hope this campaign encourages people to support our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program with donations, to engage in activism and legal advocacy in support of prisoners receiving a variety of reading materials, and that it spreads awareness about the growing control of information that these state/corporate partnerships are bringing to our lives.

Our Books Program

While the MIM Free Political Books to Prisoners Program actually began in 1988, our organization formed in late 2007, taking over the duties of the MIM Prison Ministry. This work involves publishing a regular newsletter for prisoners and corresponding with prisoners through the mail, in addition to sending other forms of literature.

As we celebrate 17 years of existence, we approach the 200,000 mark for the number of pieces of mail we have sent to prisoners over those years. For all that mail our overall confirmed censorship rate is only 6%. However, 73% of our mail is never confirmed received or censored. This is some combination of prisoners never writing us back, mail being illegally censored and mail just being lost. While the percentages of each are certainly in that order, we have no way of knowing what the actual breakdown is of the fate of that 73% of mail we send out. For the 27% of mail that we can confirm, 4 out of 5 items do make it to their recipients.

About 40,000 pieces of mail we’ve sent are letters to prisoners, while over 6000 are books and zines by other authors. The remaining almost 150,000 pieces of mail are literature that we publish, the majority of it being our newsletter Under Lock & Key, but this also includes many MIM Theory journals, Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán and various other pamphlets and study packs.

Interestingly it is the other books and zines that are censored at a higher rate (8.2%) than our own literature and letters (both less than 6%). The fact is that books and magazines do face a higher level of scrutiny than newspapers and letters, and are often censored for superficial reasons like the condition of the book or the publisher of the book not matching the sender, etc.

Anyone can browse through the incidents of censorship of our mail on our website. Numerically, Under Lock & Key accounts for most of our censorship, since that is most of the mail we send to prisoners. After ULK, you’ll see that some of our most censored pieces of literature in the last couple years are: Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt by Orisanmi Burton, Power to New Afrika by Triumphant, Revolutionary 12 Step Program by a USW comrade and our very own Fundamental Political Line of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. You’ll note that most of the reasons given for these books are clearly politically motivated, claiming the literature will cause disruptions and riots, even the 12 Step Program, as we reported in ULK 78.

Another common appearance on the list is, ironically, our Guide to Fighting Censorship in Prisons, which we send to any prisoner facing censorship at their facility.

You’ll also see in the list of censorship the occasional overturned decision. This is due to the persistence of our comrades inside as well as our volunteers on the outside who appeal as much of the unreasonable censorship as they can. This is one of many tasks that we could use your help with.

Prison and jail systems across the country continue to move to digitize letters to read on tablets, and restrict books from more and more sources, under the guise of fighting drugs. While drugs have not decreased, our problems getting mail to prisoners has increased, as you’ll read in the series of articles we’ll be publishing this week.