ACLU writes to state after influential 2010 work banned at two jails while author says ‘officials must fear’ inmates reading about ‘bias and corruption’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

An acclaimed book about discrimination against African Americans in the criminal justice system has been banned from some prisons in New Jersey, according to newly obtained records.

The New Jim Crow, an award-winning book by Michelle Alexander published in 2010, appears on lists of publications that inmates in state correctional facilities may not possess.

New Jersey officials say they'll lift ban on book The New Jim Crow in prisons Read more

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the banned book lists in response to a public records request, called for the ban to be lifted and said it violated the rights of inmates under the first amendment to the US constitution.

In a letter due to be sent on Monday to Gary Lanigan, New Jersey’s corrections commissioner, the ACLU said the ban was particularly troubling because the state had the country’s widest disparity between white and black incarceration rates.

“For the state burdened with this systemic injustice to prohibit prisoners from reading a book about race and mass incarceration is grossly ironic, misguided, and harmful,” Tess Borden, an ACLU staff attorney, said in the letter.

Officials must fear what would happen if people fully understood how biased and corrupt our so-called justice system is Michelle Alexander

Alexander said in an email the ban was in keeping with a widespread denial of civil and human rights to inmates in American prisons.

“Those who run our prisons and jails seem determined to keep those who are locked up and locked out as ignorant as possible about the racial, social, and political forces that have turned this country into the most punitive nation on earth,” she said.

“There’s no reasonable explanation for this save one: prison officials must fear what would happen if people fully understood how biased and corrupt our so-called justice system actually is.”

Under New Jersey regulations, inmates are not allowed to receive publications that threaten prison safety, incite violence or feature details of activities such as bomb-making and lock-picking. Magazines appealing to a “prurient interest in sex” are also barred.

It was not clear from the records why Alexander’s book had been judged unsuitable. Also banned were magazines covering hip-hop and black culture such as The Source and XXL.

Other banned books included My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy; The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the World’s Most Wanted Drug Lord, by Malcolm Beith; and true crime titles including In the Minds of Murderers and The World’s Most Evil Psychopaths.

A spokesman for the state corrections department did not immediately respond to a request for comment by email.

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Subtitled “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, Alexander’s book spent several weeks on US bestseller lists and was hailed as the “secular bible of a new social movement” by the academic Cornel West.

It argues that the American criminal justice system amounts to “a contemporary system of racial control”, decades after the abolition of slavery and so-called “Jim Crow” laws that enforced racial segregation.

The newly released records, which were not clearly labelled by state authorities, indicated that Alexander’s book was banned at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and Southern State Correctional Facility in Delmont.