INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION ELIMINATES BOOK ACCESS FOR PRISONERS

IDOC Watch Encourages Concerned People to Demand Book Access from All Vendors to All Facilities

PRESS RELEASE:

Over the past year, the Indiana Department of Correction has increasingly rejected books sent to inmates from vendors who had previously been allowed to send books to prisons. The restrictions limit book choices, create pricing barriers, and disallow donated reading materials to reach prisoners.

Indiana State Prison, Miami Correctional Facility, and Westville Correctional Facility have stopped accepting books from most vendors. Returned packages from Indiana State Prison state that they are not accepting books from used bookstores, and packages returned from Miami Correctional Facility indicate that they have banned books from all distributors except two–Amazon and Edward Hamilton Book Distributors, which is a catalog-based media retailer with a limited selection of publications available.

In a letter from October 2017 in which a prisoner thanked outside supporters for sending in books through a used bookstore distributor, the prisoner stated, “Sometimes when you’re in the penitentiary system, it’s easy to feel suffocated and despair.” Receiving books in the mail though, he said, is “a shining light in this tribulation we face.”

IDOC Watch supports prisoner access to used and donated books from all book distributors and has organized a call-in campaign to the offices of Governor Eric Holcomb and IDOC Commissioner Robert Carter to request that these new restrictions end and that any new policies be reversed. A suggested script for the phone campaign refers to the current restrictions as “inhumane and tantamount to censorship.”

IDOC Watch supports people who are incarcerated in Indiana and challenges the system of incarceration as a whole. The group does this by maintaining communication between people inside and outside of prisons by relaying inside experiences and struggles to the public through social media, and by organizing events to support prisoners and their loved ones.

Links:

IDOC Watch Phone Campaign: https://www.facebook.com/events/1818440051573101/

Pennsylvania bans books for prisoners: https://qz.com/1399330/prison-inmates-will-soon-be-reading-ebooks-but-thats-not-a-good-thing/

From IDOC Watch Facebook event page:

“The new restrictions at these facilities limit book orders to only two vendors, one of which is Amazon. All other reading material will be purchased from tablets. Critics of the Pennsylvania policy have rightly pointed out the money-making scheme behind this shift. Companies like GTL who manufacture the tablets stand to gain millions of dollars by monopolizing inmate communication and literature. If we don’t move now, the IDOC will feel comfortable expanding this policy to all prisons and effectively end used and new book donations to inmates.

Please call:

Commissioner Robert Carter | (317) 232-5711
Governor Eric Holcomb | (317) 232-4567

Sample Script:

“I am calling to request that the restrictions being put in place on book donations at Miami Correctional, Westville Correctional, and Indiana State Prison be reversed and no such restrictions be applied to any idoc facility. Barring inmates from reading materials is inhumane and tantamount to censorship. Other states have rightly reversed such policies and I ask that Indiana do the same”

Remember to report back (here) with how your calls go.”

Share This:

1 Comment on "INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION ELIMINATES BOOK ACCESS FOR PRISONERS"

  1. A form of book burning, without the fire.
    If they want to do this to prisoners; give them an inch… (Just saying)
    1984 and Fahrenheit 451 novels both used book burning to control.
    The name of the “their” game is “control.”

Comments are closed.