Banned books, lack of librarians: What it's like to read in a NC prison

“Inmates show up for a meeting with a book from the 1800’s, and these people are crying,” Missen said. “Because for the first time, they feel like they’re inside somebody else’s skin, and they can see where they’re coming from.”

If an inmate in a North Carolina prison wanted to read “Fifty Shades Darker,” comics from “The Watchmen” series, Maya Angelou’s autobiography or some encyclopedias, they would leave the library empty-handed.

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety’s “Disapproved Publications Report” includes nearly 500 titles deemed pornographic, violent or otherwise inappropriate for prisoners. More mundane publications like dictionaries and issues of “Rolling Stone” are also on the list.

After the North Carolina American Civil Liberties Union challenged the list, the DPS set out to review the entire collection.

The list has been tailored to promote safety, but advocates like Missen, an associate professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have criticized the report’s breadth. He pointed to the list as just one example of shortcomings in North Carolina prisoner education.

Despite accusations of censorship, the DPS holds prison safety is the goal of the list. Texts that might suggest how to escape from prison, or how to kill a prison guard, are barred for obvious reasons.

Department of Corrections deputy director of administration Carlton Joyner said the list is always in flux.

Publications sent to prisoners are skimmed upon arrival, Joyner said. If the material is marked inappropriate, it will be banned for 12 months. Joyner said books are not added to the list unless received, reviewed and flagged.

The DOC’s policy once prohibited books based on size, but Joyner said all books from that category were removed from the list.

“If a book is currently on the list, it will be based on content solely,” Joyner said.

Until January, inmates were denied access to Michelle Alexander’s, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” North Carolina ACLU legal director Chris Brook successfully pressured the DPS to lift the ban last month. He said the logic behind banning the Alexander book was unclear.

“It’s about the mass incarceration of young black men, who are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system,” he said. “That’s a reality anyone incarcerated in North Carolina is aware of, day in and day out.”

Brook called the censorship of a book that critiques the system that victimizes many inmates is “cruelly ironic” at best. At worst, he said limiting educational materials can cripple an inmate’s prospects of staying out of prison after release.

A 2016 study published by the RAND Review found inmates who participated in any form of correctional education were up to 43 percent less likely to return to prison. Missen credited literature’s ability to instill inmates with empathy for the link between reading and reduced recidivism rates.

He also said attitudes toward inmates and prisons in the United States are more punitive than constructive. Banned books, understaffed libraries and limited resources are symptoms of a toxic national prison culture that repeatedly fails its captives.

For instance, in North Carolina, although all prison facilities are required to house a library, there’s one librarian dedicated to the entire system, totaling nearly 40,000 inmates.

A fully functioning library, Missen said, should be the bare minimum for inmates. He described a “hugely dysfunctional” situation in American prisons, where inmates and staff are afraid of each other. But he said trust and education are keys to closing that gap.

Libraries in North Carolina prisons are currently staffed by “qualified staff members or community volunteers,” as DOC policy 1101a dictates. Missen said retaining a single librarian and a workforce of fill-ins for 55 prisons is “insane.”

Without a librarian, Missen wonders who will speak out for the educational rights of North Carolina's inmates.

Had the ACLU not intervened, he said it’s likely the ban on “The New Jim Crow” would have gone unchallenged.

“Who is there in the prison who is advocating for access to information?” Missen said. “Who is advocating for these books to be available?”