In the way of these things, the decision to ban all prisoners from receiving books to read was put through by the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, without anyone noticing enough to kick up a fuss – though from today that looks set to change.

It was contained within an instruction to set up the incentives and earned privileges scheme last November. Basically this says that prisoners can't get anything without earning it. Families and friends are therefore now banned from sending parcels to prisoners.

And, crucially, this includes books. Whatever the Ministry of Justice will now say, no prisoner in the UK can now be sent books by anyone.

As Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform says in her piece on politics.co.uk: "These new restrictions relate to a downgrading of the system of rewards and punishments, ostensibly designed to encourage prisoners to comply with prison rules. Yet the ban on receiving books is a blanket decision, so no matter how compliant and well behaved you are, no prisoner will be allowed to receive books from the outside."

How has it come to this? Overturning all known advantages of literacy and literature, and knowing that one of the few benefits of prison is that prisoners can find an education they mostly lack, the justice secretary has stopped books going into individual prisoners' hands?

Eric Allison, the Guardian's prisons correspondent, himself a former prisoner, says it seems that Chris Grayling's tough image is key. "It's an astonishingly petty decision," he said.

It seems the Ministry of Justice's argument is two-fold. Firstly, that prisoners have to earn everything; and, secondly, that "illegal things can be sent in parcels".

There is clearly an argument about earning certain privileges. But books are not Mars bars. They are or should be the right of every single person in this country. In prisons especially – where many prisoners have had spasmodic or non-existent education outside – books are a way to understanding, to thought, to empathy, to finding the richness of life. English PEN, the writers' organisation, which sends authors to work with prisoners, knows that you can read your way to rehabilitation.

And the idea that earning money in prison is either easy or lucrative is idiotic. No prisoner is going to earn enough to afford to buy books. And using the library argument doesn't wash either – some prison libraries are very good (Holloway, for example), but others are awful. And the time prisoners get to spend there is small, has to be booked and may not take place regularly.

Of course, some attempts are and will be made to send drugs in books to prisoners. These are prisons not nunneries. But prison staff – and the privatised prisons – are paid to manage risk, not hide behind it. Far too often in Grayling-land, security becomes an excuse for terrible policies, rather than a tool for keeping prisons safe.

Today, Frances Crook's piece has kicked off a Twitter storm and a Change.org petition to override the decision. Writers like Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen, Mark Haddon and Linda Grant, and others, are both aghast and furious. English PEN, the Howard League, and other penal reform bodies will from today campaign fiercely against a signal injustice from the justice secretary.

They believe this decision has to be overturned. John Podmore, former prison governor and penal reformer, points out that any prison campaign should be based on the fact that books are not a privilege but a necessity, particularly in prison, and that unrestricted access to literature – of all kinds – should be the starting point for rehabilitation. "This ban is just another of the awful 50 shades of Grayling," he said.