No books in jail

[RCMerchant]

My stepson got arrested-hes out now-but when he was in jail I went up and was gonna drop him off some books.
But Van Buren County Jail will not allow inmates to have books anymore.
WTF?
Is this country turning into Nazi Germany?
When I was in jail,we had coffee(now gone) cigarettes (now gone) and f**k!-BOOKS (now gone)
What the hell happened to basic human rights?
I aint talking about serial killers-Im talking about folks like me and you who who end up in a bad situation.
I been to jail. Books saved my sanity.
Dam. What happened to the America I grew up  in 1970's?

[dean]

What the hell?  Are they allowed anything??

[Rev. Powell]

RC, are they not allowed to have books, or are you not allowed to give them books?

My guess is they've probably had issues with people smuggling stuff in books. You could easily put a tab of acid in a book.

But they should have a jailhouse library of some sort for sure.

[lester1/2jr]

ostensibly they are supposed to be "correcting" themselves in there. hard to accomplish without new knowledge.

[major jay]

ostensibly they are supposed to be "correcting" themselves in there. hard to accomplish without new knowledge.

It's just an industry nowadays. Though maybe I'm being naive, and it always has been.

[zombie no.one]

My guess is they've probably had issues with people smuggling stuff in books. You could easily put a tab of acid in a book.

yeah this is what I was thinking...  Or the classic 'hollowed out' book with nail file or whatever inside. Unlikely that kind of thing would slip by security but they'd still have to spend the time checking for it

[ER]

That's insane. When I was in high school a local church had a Books For Prisoners drive, which I thought was a great thing and got involved with that. You know they used to call prisons reformatories. Not anymore.

Glad your stepson is out; hope he never goes back.

[ChaosTheory]

RC, are they not allowed to have books, or are you not allowed to give them books?

My guess is they've probably had issues with people smuggling stuff in books. You could easily put a tab of acid in a book.

That was my thought too.  Where I live anything that the prisoners receive has to be "screened" - when I was working at a bookstore we would mail books and magazines to the prison for people all the time; so they could definitely get reading material, there was just a particular process.

If they're not allowed books at all, that pretty well defeats the whole "rehabilitation" idea ...

[Andrew]

RC, are they not allowed to have books, or are you not allowed to give them books?

My guess is they've probably had issues with people smuggling stuff in books. You could easily put a tab of acid in a book.

That was my thought too.  Where I live anything that the prisoners receive has to be "screened" - when I was working at a bookstore we would mail books and magazines to the prison for people all the time; so they could definitely get reading material, there was just a particular process.

If they're not allowed books at all, that pretty well defeats the whole "rehabilitation" idea ...

I'd hope that Rev Powell's idea is correct.  I can understand denying certain things to a person serving a sentence, but books is not one of them.  That should never be the case.

[indianasmith]

I bet GHouck could set us straight on this.

[RCMerchant]

They got a book cart in jail-but those books are comprised of the books that folks gave to inmates. Now that you cant give inmates books-these are the books that they have-FOREVER.No new books. Same old s**t thats been their for the last 50 years.
I been in jail.Not all inmates are evil. People f**k up.We aint evil.We man up and live good lives.And there aint a dam thing to do in jail but play cards and read books. And fight. You fight if you aint got no book to read.Because boredom breeds violence.

[indianasmith]

Someone probably tried to slip something into the prison that was contraband, and got a ban on all books as a result.  A shame, really.