"Public engagement consistently has been the most effective tool to overturn book bans."

We Can’t Forget People Experiencing Incarceration in Our Fight for Readers’ Rights, an essay published today on Book Riot, describes community resistance to book bans and digitized correspondence ("scan n' shred" first class mail) in Illinois and Wisconsin state prisons, and the harms these and other prison censorship techniques cause. Written by BtP board member Michelle Dillon, with an introduction by Book Riot editor Kelly Jensen.

"Prison censorship is the number one First Amendment violation in America. Prison censorship is intimately tied to the legacy of slavery, and despite the bounty of research about how access to books and libraries reduces recidivism, every day, those on the inside and outside find that the rules about which books are allowed in these institutions change without warning."

Read the rest on Book Riot.

To read about how BTP mobilized public sentiment against a proposed ban on donated books in the WA state prison system six years ago, go to Press About Us and scroll down to the articles from 2019.