Prison Banned Books Week

Recently, prisons and jails have been contracting with private telecom companies to provide tablets to detained and incarcerated people. While tablets offer unprecedented access to loved ones and outside allies, they have also been used to curtail paper literature under specious claims that mail is the primary conduit of contraband.

Content on tablets is also highly limited–with titles largely in the public domain whose copyright has lapsed because they were published in the nineteenth century. Despite obtaining these works for free, many prisons and jails charge incarcerated people to access this content. This inaccessible and outdated reading material is used to justify the denial of paper literature, including health and legal news.

San Francisco Public Library recently extended their catalog to local jails. This Prison Banned Books Week we are calling for public library catalogs to be made available on all prison and jail tablets. Library content is for community use and detained and incarcerated people are part of our communities. We are asking tablet companies to partner with our already funded library systems to extend access to ALL our community members. 

Demand Department of Corrections, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Sheriffs ensure that people held in carceral facilities have equal access to both paper literature and tablets. Reading should not be restricted.