“Prison Is Dull Today”: Prison Libraries and the Irony of Pious Reading

Abstract

most, if not all, chapel libraries in federal prisons around the coun try (Goodstein). The Associated Press reported on 10 June 2007 that this metaphoric book burning stemmed from an April 2004 review of the problem of radical Islam in federal prisons by the United States Department of Justice (Neumeister). The lawsuit was filed on First Amendment grounds by a Christian and a Jew, convicts at the federal prison in Otisville, New York, who were affected by this Me morial Day massacre of religious literature (Goodstein). When the news of the suit broke, it stirred up considerable criti cism among Republicans, liberal Christians, and callers to evan gelical talk shows. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reversed itself in September and returned the books to the libraries. On 27 September 2007 the New York Times reported that [t]he Bureau will begin im mediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radical izing or incite violence (Banerjee). The bureau continued review ing the literature, however, and compiled lists of approved reading; it also reserved the right to remove any religious literature that it found offensive or a threat to security. Convicts still could order re ligious and other materials directly from publishers, as they could even under the original order. Given that library rights for prisoners are severely limited, it is doubtful that the plaintiffs will gain relief from the lawsuit, which is still in the courts. The Prison Litigation and Reform Act of 1996 al lowed removal of many prisoner privileges, as well as restricting cor rectional court orders by reducing the number of lawsuits convicts could file unless they exhausted prison administrative channels first. United States Supreme Court decisions from the late 1970s on also se verely curtailed prison privileges. (See Bounds v. Smith, 1977; Rhodes v. Chapman, 1987; Wilson v. Seiter, 1991; and esp. Lewis v. Casey, 1996,