Advocates: New policy restricts NY inmates’ access to books
NEW YORK — People who want to send a copy of jailhouse classics like “The Shawshank Redemption” to a loved in a New York prison may soon be out of luck.
A new policy, rolled out last month to help prevent drugs from being smuggled into prisons, will bar inmates from getting packages containing books, or almost anything else, in the mail unless they come from a short list of approved online commissaries.
The plan, now in place at just three of the state’s prisons but eventually headed for all 54, has drawn an outraged response from several advocacy groups, who say reading can be a key part of an inmate’s rehabilitation.
“The State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision needs to promote moral and responsible prison policies that uphold inmates’ access to information and safeguard the right to read,” said Summer Lopez, a senior director at PEN America, a press freedom group that runs a national prison writing program.