In September 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections announced it would put a halt to book donation programs, mail-order books, and publications for incarcerated people housed in state prisons. Although the restrictive policy has since been reversed, there are still concerns among those who run the programs and people behind bars.

This, of course, isn’t the first time prisons have restricted books. Just like school districts and universities, books and other reading materials sent to incarcerated people through a state’s Departments of Corrections are regularly censored. Often, individual prison staff are responsible for monitoring the influx of materials, which they can often reject or deny at their discretion. The practice inhibits knowledge about gender, sexuality, health, and many other important topics to those behind bars. While the specific guidelines vary from state to state, and even prison to prison, the United States houses 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 1,852 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails in addition to military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons, according to a 2018 report by Prison Policy Initiative.

Books can be lifelines for many people in prison. Books can be a person’s only contact with the world outside of prison, especially if they’re no longer in touch with family or friends. Additionally, books provide important information to incarcerated people who already have limited resources, whether it’s legal or health information. For incarcerated queer and trans people, for instance, books can provide credible sex education as well as legal information regarding trans care.

To better understand the issue, Teen Vogue spoke to organizers involved with prison book-giving programs, including the Asheville, North Carolina-based Tranzmission; Austin, Texas-based Inside Books Project; and Madison, Wisconsin-based LGBT Books to Prisoners — organizations that help incarcerated people get access to publications. We also chatted with an incarcerated person in Texas about his experience with restrictive conditions.

Grier Low, who has been organizing with Tranzmission for the past seven years, says books will be rejected by prison staff for various reasons, such as “individual state restrictions, restrictions at the specific facility, and personal bias of the mail room staff.”

In October, Truth Out reported that the Uptown People’s Law Center and the MacArthur Justice Center of Illinois sued the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) director on behalf of LGBTQ prison abolition organization Black & Pink, claiming Illinois prisons "have adopted and implemented discriminatory mail policies and practices prohibiting delivery of Black & Pink publications and other written forms of speech, including greeting cards and chapter updates." Truth Out also reported that when reached for comment, a media administrator for IDOC said in an email that “the publication has not been banned at any IDOC facilities,” but noted that it wasn’t clear which publication was being referred to, and that further communication to the IDOC had not been responded to at the time of publication. (Teen Vogue also reached out for comment to IDOC's media administrator, who would not comment on the allegations, and directed Teen Vogue to send a Freedom of Information act request to obtain a list of publications at IDOC.) This allegation echoes a similar ban on publications that “promote homosexuality,” enacted in 2016 by the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex, which was quickly overturned, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.

“The one [reason] we see the most returns on are either based on sexually explicit content or because the facility only accepts books from an authorized vendor,” Low tells Teen Vogue.