Incarcerated people in Ohio have an easier time getting their hands on the book that founded Nazism than computer coding literature due to a series of bizarre, unequally enforced policies restricting access to certain reading materials. Nonprofits and authors speaking with The Marshall Project say the state’s confusing and overly broad screening process leads to unnecessary bans of innocuous books that could enrich or educate incarcerated people while allowing texts like Mein Kampf.
Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODCR) has banned 293 publications between Feb. 2018 to Jan. 2022, according to documents obtained by The Marshall Project. Those include restrictions on the computer coding guides, A Smarter Way to Learn Java Script and Effective Java. The justification for the bans? Apparently, these coding guides pose “a threat to the rehabilitation of inmates” or guards.
ODCR permitted a text-only copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf even though it bans other books glorifying white supremacy and neo-Nazis.
“DRC only permits a text-only version of Mein Kampf that is devoid of pictures, photographs, drawings, diagrams, etc. of [N]azi symbols,” an ODCR spokesperson told The Marshall Project.
ODCR did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment, but a spokesperson for the department told The Marshall Project these types of guides present “a substantial risk of misuse” and pose a security threat. In theory, incarcerated people could use the skills gleaned from these books to hack or disrupt the prison’s computer systems.
Joshua Bloch, the author of Effective Java, pushed back against the ODCR’s policies, which he called “misguided.”
“Effective Java is no more dangerous than Elements of Style,” Bloch told Gizmodo. “The former teaches you to write high quality code, the latter to write high quality prose. Either skill can be used for good or for ill. If you believe, as I do, that incarceration should offer opportunities for rehabilitation, then it makes no sense to ban Effective Java from prisons.”
How does book banning work in Ohio’s prisons?
Books sent to Ohio inmates go through multiple rounds of screening. In the first stage, books are screened by prison staff in the mail room, who then decide whether or not to send the book through to its recipient or flag it for further review. Flagged books are then reviewed by a managing officer who can either approve the book or write a memo explaining why it’s banned. The only books that appear on ODCR’s banned list, according to the ODCR spokesperson speaking with The Marshall Project, are ones that were appealed by the intended recipient. That means the total number of books prevented from reaching their recipients could be larger than the 293 publications that were listed as banned between 2018 and 2022.
The books on the banned list reportedly includes an army survival guide, a book about witchcraft, several books about prison abolition, and a biography of Mexican drug lord El Chapo. Around 20 of the books banned by the ODCR, including the computer programming guides noted above, don’t cite any specific ODRC policy on banned publication, according to The Marshall Project. On the other hand, another book about El Chapo written and co-authored by a Drug Enforcement Agency officer who helped track down the cartel leader was screened and ultimately allowed through.
Authors and non-profit organisations that donate books to incarcerated people told The Marshall Project these odd, inconsistent rules make it hard for them to know whether or not books ever make it to their intended recipients.
Heather Ann Thompson, the author of a book documenting the 1971 prison uprising in the Attica correctional facility, told the Marshall Project the whims of particular prison staff in penitentiaries all across the US can play an outsized role in deciding what books ultimately make it through the screening process even when there are set rules in place. “It is utterly at the discretion of corrections officers working in those mailrooms to do what they want,” Thompson said. Thompson won a settlement against the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision on First Amendment grounds after she sued the agency for barring incarcerated people from accessing to her book in the state. Now, New York prisoners can review a copy of the book, though two pages illustrating the prison’s layout have been removed.