Prisons Ban Reading Shakespeare for Inmates

When Malcolm X made the transition from a crimminal to a Civil Rights icon he credited the books he was able to read while in prison for his success. But the catalyst that took a man from the streets to the history books is often denied to those incarcerated today as many U.S. prisons have started banning most reading materials.

Nationwide, the works of Toni Morrison and Sojourner Truth have reportedly been banned in prisons, even Shakespeare. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit against the Berkeley County Jail in South Carolina, because inmates there are allegedly only allowed to read the Bible. And by July this year, the Connecticut Department of Corrections plans to further limit the books inmates there can read over concerns that an ex-con took part in the notorious Petit family murders in 2007 after reading violent books in prison.


“The idea that this horrific crime was a result of what they read in jail and not other factors is simplistic,” said David C. Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, to theLoop21. “The Bible contains many scenes of appalling violence and cruelty, but no one suggests that prisoners should not be allowed to read the Bible.”

A publication called the Prison Legal News (PLN), which produces materials informing inmates of their rights, is the plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit against Berkeley County Detention Center, along with the U.S. Justice Department. In 2008, a staffer at the jail allegedly told a PLN staffer that the publication was banned there due to its Bible-only policy.

PLN editor Paul Wright told theLoop21 that over the last 10 to 15 years, correctional facilities have become increasingly likely to implement policies of blanket censorship on reading materials. During that timeframe, he said that PLN has been involved in a few dozen lawsuits involving reading bans in prisons. He said the inclination towards censorship reflects how “overall, all Americans’ civil and constitutional rights are being undermined, not just in prisons and jails.”

While no one’s arguing that prisoners should be reading books that instruct them on, say, picking locks or tunnel digging to help them escape, imposing blanket bans on what they can read does a disservice to them and to society generally. Campus Progress points out, for example, that there’s a direct correlation between illiteracy and incarceration. Like Malcolm X when he entered prison, an estimated 70 percent of inmates cannot read above a grade school level. That figure grows to 85 percent among juvenile inmates. Given that at 38.3 percent,  the number of African Americans in prison is nearly triple their share of the U.S. population overall, reading bans in correctional facilities directly impact the ability of many African American immates to educate themselves.



Reading has long been used as a vehicle to help rehabilitate prisoners.

“Research shows the best predictors that a prisoner will be able to return to the community and live a productive life depends on whether they’ve maintained connections to the outside word,” Fathi said. “Allowing prisoners to receive books, newspapers and magazine helps them engage and is very important from a public safety standpoint.”

The late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was just one high-profile advocate for protecting prisoners’ right to read. He argued, “When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded. If anything, the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment.”

In the effort to get tough on crime there has been an overall shift to prison being about solely about punishment, not about rehabilitation. But with so many prison inmates being addicts or having severe mental health needs, our prisons have become the new asylums and rehab clinics. A prison record already reduces the chances of employment post-release for most ex-convicts. If denied even the basics of rehabilitation -- reading for self-enrichment -- what hope is there for those convicted to ever have a productive life outside of the penal system?

Brief sentences become defacto "life sentences" as drug and non-violent crime offenders are trapped behind a label they cannot shake.

Jail inmates, western Pa. college students study criminology together

BEAVER, Pa. — On nearly every Tuesday morning since mid-January, a group of about 16 students has gathered at the Beaver County Jail.

Most are young, in their early 20s. They've come to Beaver County from all over the United States, as far away as California and Maine. They sit paired together at small classroom tables, listening to guest speakers, discussing textbooks and working on group projects.

At the end of each class, when the jail's thick metal front door slams shut, half of the students are on one side and half are on the other.

The class, simply titled "Criminology," brings Geneva College undergraduates and jail inmates together to talk about the justice system — how it functions, how it's flawed and its impact on communities and society as a whole.
And there's an added twist. Most classes feature a guest speaker who works in local law enforcement or the judicial system.

"It's not every day you get to talk to the same people that put you in here," said Geovannie Albertorio, 22, a class member who is serving a five- to 10-year sentence for armed robbery.

If there's one overarching theme to the discussions, it's this: The American criminal justice system is badly in need of reform.

That's one thing that the inmates, academics and most of the guests tended to agree on. Speakers included District Attorney Anthony Berosh, Detective Capt. Tony McClure and President Judge John D. McBride, who spoke to the class for the first time in the spring 2011 semester.

"I wanted to get across to (the class) that we judges even function within a system and we have restrictions on what we can do and can't do," McBride said later. "We have to keep working. We have to keep doing our job and discovering better ways to do things."

The idea for the class came to Beaver County Jail Chaplain Denny Ugoletti about four years ago, when he was thumbing through an issue of American Jails Magazine and read about a similar program affiliated with Temple University.

The basic premise was that bringing college students and incarcerated people together in a learning environment would benefit everyone involved, and create more informed, more open-minded citizens in the long run.

It works, Ugoletti said. He now sees it happen in Beaver County, semester after semester.
"It breaks down stereotypes," he said. "Many students come in here with a fear. They have these preconceived notions that inmates are gorillas, thugs, monsters."

And it lets inmates experience taking a college course with college students, reading the same books, doing the same work and taking the same tests. In about half of the seven semesters since the class began, Ugoletti said, an inmate student has had the highest grade.

"That was the first time I'd been in a class since I was 19," said Anthony Terry, who's now 26 and serving a federal sentence for possession with intent to distribute cocaine. "You're showing yourself you can still do things you thought you gave up on. ... You're not just this drug dealer that's locked up."

The class is extremely popular with jail residents, said Deputy Warden Carol Steele-Smith, who coordinates the program on the jail side. To narrow the list, she asks prospective students to write an essay about why they want to take the class.

It's so popular with Geneva students that Brad Frey, the sociology professor who leads the course, said it fills almost immediately when course registration opens.

The experience is transformative, Frey said, for students inside, as well as outside, the walls of the jail.

"As good as it is to hear the (guest speakers) present, it's the collaboration between the Geneva students and the inmate students that makes it work," Frey said. "The learning is so rich."