Texas State Prisons Allow Prisoners To Read Mein Kampf And David Duke's "My Awakening," While Banning Other Books Like "The Color Purple," Dante's Inferno"

(Southern accent) They just want to ensure their white residents are as comfortable as possible.

States have been censoring books that go to prisons for ages, but there are some guidelines to how it's done. In 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court concluded prisons could only censor publications when the decision is tied to prison issues (such as the potential for starting a riot or making a weapon) and when the reasoning behind the censorship is "legitimate and neutral." Anything else violates the First Amendment rights of the publishers and the prisoners, as the Texas Civil Rights Project noted in its report on TDCJ banned books published in 2011.

In Texas, the guidelines are pretty simple: prisoners can only receive books from publishers or bookstores, to prevent people smuggling other illicit items in with the books.

Anything from a little nudity on the cover — it doesn't matter how classy — to racially charged language or scenes that are just too sexy can get a book flagged. The books are reviewed by prison mail clerks and if a book is not on a master list of approved reading material, the mail clerk looks the book over and decides, based on the aforementioned guidelines, whether it should be given to the prisoner or not.

And there are definitely some loopholes in the system. Prisoners can't read Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, but they can get copies of Mein Kampf, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project. An edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets has been banned because of a nude painting on the cover, but David Duke's My Awakening is just fine. Prisoners can't read Dante's Inferno, Salmon Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, or Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, but they can get copies of Che Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare, according to the report. Cont.

Story from - Houston Press