Take Action: Urge Texas to Reverse its Prisoner Book Ban

A prison advocacy group is suing the Texas prison system over prisoners’ rights to order two books on prison conditions and the American criminal justice system.

Texas officials have blocked prisoner access to two books: Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System, by journalist Silja J.A. Talvi and Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime by Joel Dyer. Prison Legal News, the distributor of the books, filed a federal lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice last week, arguing that the state has denied prisoners their constitutional rights.

But the state says it isn’t banning the books because they’re critical of the system – officials claim they blocked the books because they’re too graphic. In fact, descriptions of sexual assault in the two books are critical to tell the story of a prisoner’s life and to address prison conditions. Neither are remotely gratuitous.

Send a letter to Texas Department of Criminal Justice Director Brad Livingston today, urging him to change the department policy on these two important books.

In Demember 2008, PLN received an order for Women Behind Bars from a prisoner at the TDCJ’s Hilltop Unit. The mailroom at the Hilltop Unit refused to deliver the book. In March 2009, Perpetual Prisoner Machine was censored at the TDCJ’s Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Texas. Two copies of Women Behind Bars were also refused delivery at TDCJ’s Garza East Unit in September 2009.

Women Behind Bars was deemed “detrimental to offenders’ rehabilitation, because it would encourage homosexual or deviant criminal behavior.” The notification suggested the book was censored by the mailroom because page 38 depicted “sex with a minor”.

The passage on page 38 in fact describes an act of abuse an Oklahoma prisoner suffered as a child:

The dark secret of her life was that she had been forced to perform fellatio on her uncle when she was just four years old. … This unresolved trauma became “the template for a lifetime of distrust, fear uncertainty and a spirit of self-negation.”

Firstly, this passage – which is necessary to tell the victim’s story – is in no way graphic. To the contrary, it puts into context the destructive capacity of abuse. Secondly, to determine that this would in any way encourage homosexual behavior is offensive and reckless.

TDCJ “disapproved” of Perpetual Prisoner Machine because page 45 discusses “rape”. Page 45, in fact, quotes from a 1968 Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office investigation into sexual assault in prison, and describes crimes committed against prisoners.

The state never provided Prison Legal News with information on how to contest the censorship. PLN believes it likely the TDCJ will continue to censor the books it distributes. The suit states that the “TDCJs censorship regime, as authorized and supervised by Livingston, is arbitrary, serves no legitimate penological purpose as applied to PLN’ publication, and violates the constitutional rights of publishers like PLN,” and, “TDCJs written policies do not permit censoring publications like Women Behind Bars and Perpetual Prisoner Machine for the reasons identified by Defendants.”

Please take action today -- send a letter to the TDCJ Director about this issue.

Download the full PLN lawsuit here.