We write this petition, during the inaugural Prison Banned Books Week, to bring to your attention the negative impacts of carceral censorship and to ask that in your role as lead administrator of your state's prison system, to take steps to stop the rapidly escalating carceral censorship as a matter of public interest.

Specifically, we oppose the limiting of paper literature to ‘approved vendors.’ Any publisher, book store or other book distributor should be allowed to send books to incarcerated people in accordance with the “publisher only” rule upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 550-51 (1979). Allowing some publishers and vendors to send books to incarcerated people while excluding others, violates publishers’ rights to free speech and equal protection as guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We ask you to enforce full access for all booksellers as a matter of civil rights.

We also oppose “prior approval” which requires incarcerated individuals to obtain written permission from their prison’s administration for each and every title they want to read. This bureaucratic hurdle is unnecessary and simply burdens staff and incarcerated persons, representing an unnecessary prior burden on incarcerated people’s First Amendment rights. We ask you to enforce a policy that prohibits the use of “prior approval.”

Finally, we oppose unnecessary restrictions on the size of books, the binding type, the color of paper the literature is wrapped in, whether a book is free or donated and all other restrictions on literature that can be mailed to correctional facilities. These restrictions are unrelated to any legitimate interest the state might have. These policies serve no meaningful intervention in the control of contraband to our knowledge. They do, however, grossly limit incarcerated people’s access to reading materials which has demonstrable positive benefits.

Limiting paper literature in favor of tablets is not justifiable. While tablets offer incarcerated people many benefits, which we commend, they are not a substitute for paper literature. Tablets offer limited reading materials and are more prone to censorship. There is currently no oversight of the private companies providing these tablets and the content provided on them. However, we do know that cost for use, especially for functionally illiterate people, can prove exclusionary since their rate of reading is much slower. We know that over 60% of incarcerated people are functionally illiterate. Limiting reading materials is antithetical to purported carceral aims. Tablets should supplement, not supplant paper literature.

We ask that your Department of Corrections cease censorship. Reading has been shown through decades of research to have myriad positive impacts for incarcerated people, in particular.

We ask you take the following actions:

1) Adopt the new American Library Association’s Standards for Carceral Libraries in your state's facilities.
2) Enable all bookstores and publishers the right to send literature to incarcerated people, including second hand bookstores.
3) Enact policies that specifically prohibit prisons from denying paper literature through content-neutral policies such as the size of a book, hardcover binding, and whether literature is used or free.