Amid ACLU Protest, NC Prisons Will Remove The New Jim Crow From Banned Books List

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety will immediately remove The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness from its list of books that are banned in state prisons, a day after the ACLU of North Carolina sent DPS officials a letter demanding it do so.

"Yesterday, the department received a letter from the ACLU requesting immediate removal of The New Jim Crow from the NCDPS Disapproved Publications Report," a DPS spokesperson told the INDY in an email. "Upon receipt, the department responded to the ACLU that it would look into the matter. As of today, the director of Prisons has decided to immediately remove the book titled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander from the Disapproved Publications Report. The director will be reviewing the entire list to determine whether any other books will be removed from the report."

The ACLU of NC says prohibiting Michelle Alexander's award-winning 2010 book is not only a violation of prisoners' First Amendment rights but also "cruelly ironic given the critical role it plays to understanding the pervasive racial injustice behind our epidemic of mass incarceration." In a letter to DPS officials, the organization asked that the book be removed from the state's Master List of Disapproved Publications, that DPS review the list, and that the agency turn over any records and communications related to the banned books list or The New Jim Crow.

"As NC DPS itself recognizes, censoring prisoner access to publications that grapple with matters of public interest, such as The New Jim Crow merits heightened scrutiny," the letter reads. "The fact that other prison system permit the book undermines the connection between legitimate interest in safety and this exercise in censorship. Barring The New Jim Crow from our state's prisons because it shines a light on a harsh reality confronted every day by Black prisoners in North Carolina is not only indefensible as a matter of constitutional rights, DPS policy and logic but also cruelly ironic."

Read more: https://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2018/01/23/amid-aclu-protest-nc-prisons-will-remove-the-new-jim-crow-from-banned-books-list