Connecticut Department of Correction to Further Limit What Prisoners May Read

Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky served time in prison even before murdering Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters four years ago during a home invasion in Cheshire, Conn.

During the criminal proceedings for the murders, it surfaced that Hayes had read a book called In the Middle of the Night: the Shocking True Story of a Family Killed in Cold Blood and other violent materials while locked up for previous crimes.

That discovery prompted Connecticut state Sen. John Kissel to ask state Corrections Commissioner Leo Arnone to crack down on the reading materials available to prisoners. In July, Arnone said that a new policy would be instituted that would impose additional restrictions on the literature in prison libraries.

But while it makes sense for books on, say, homemade bombs or prison escapes to be banned in correctional facilities, launching a general ban on any book deemed violent infringes on First Amendment rights.

Nationwide, books commonly found on the syllabuses of college English courses have been removed from prison libraries. William Shakespeare, Toni Morrison and Pablo Neruda are some of the authors whose books have been banned. And in South Carolina’s Berkeley County Detention Center, the Bible is reportedly the sole book inmates may read, never mind that the Bible contains graphic scenes of violence as well, not to mention Peter’s supernatural breakout from jail.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association are some of the groups that oppose sweeping bans on literature in prison. Moreover, the National Institute of Literacy has shown a link between incarceration and low reading skills. According to the NIL, 70 percent of prisoners cannot read beyond a grade school level. Gutting prison libraries will only exacerbate the problem.

If high school students are reading the works of Shakespeare, Morrison and Neruda in English class, inmates should be afforded that opportunity as well. If not, there’s a great risk that they will re-enter society as illiterates who return to crime because they lack a basic skill needed to succeed professionally—literacy.

As horrific as the murders of the Petit family were, books likely did not motivate Steven Hayes to carry out the crimes. If he gravitated towards violent literature in prison, it’s probably because he had an inclination towards violence. Books did not make him bloodthirsty.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy executive director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, put it this way:  “Somebody that is moved to commit a crime has much more going on in their lives than simply having read a few comic books or a novel or In Cold Blood,” she told the Associated Press last fall.

Let the Connecticut Department of Corrections know that issuing a blanket ban on so-called violent books contradicts the principles on which America was based.

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