Texas Prisons Ban 10,000 Books. No Charlie Brown Christmas for Inmates. But Mein Kampf just fine.

[n2doc]

The nearly 150,000 inmates in Texas prisons are barred from using Facebook, possessing cellphones and receiving snacks in the mail. They are also prohibited from reading the pop-up edition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “The Color Purple” and the 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalog.

The publications are among the 10,000 titles banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a list that includes best sellers like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “A Time to Kill” and even obscure works, such as the “MapQuest Road Atlas.” Not banned: “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler and books by white nationalists, including David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

Security at the roughly 50 state prisons across Texas extends beyond barbed-wire fences and cell-by-cell searches to include the careful reading of every book and magazine sent to inmates. The reviews are conducted not by guards but rather by mailroom staff members who skim the pages looking for graphic sexual content and material that could help inmates make a weapon, plot an escape or stir disorder.

“If the book does not violate the uniform offender correspondence policy, then offenders are allowed to have it,” Jason Clark, a spokesman at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said. “Offenders have access to thousands of publications.”



more

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/us/banned-books-texas-prisons.html

[Brainstormy]

1. years ago

we had a friend with a kid in prison. For something really terrible, like possession of marijuana. Anyway, lots of us sent books and it was crazy what they rejected. Once they refused to let him have the Norton Anthology of Western Literature. So, nothing surprises me.

[Ilsa]

2. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" really gets my motor humming!

Yeah, it makes me want to call in a plumber so I can get a look at the moon while he works!

What's wrong with CBC?

[louis-t]

3. Linus was a Communist.

[Thor_MN]

4. Is there a pop up version of Mein Kampf?

Maybe it's that it is a pop up book and not CBC?

Personally I think banning books for content is ridiculous, but I can see banning books that could facilitate passing contraband hidden inside the pages themselves. Every page in a Pop Up book has multiple layers that could serve to hide things.