sound and solid
I just took a survey about Texas prisons for the Texas State Department of Criminal Justice’s sunset review process. Many of the questions were pretty revealing about the Texas prison system. The first question asked, “Currently, prisoners cannot have food, clothing, jewelry, and toiletries mailed to them by anyone, nor can they receive books, magazines, and newspapers unless mailed by the publisher. What do you feel prisoners should have direct access to through the mail?” While I can certainly understand why prison adminstrators would want to restrict clothing and jewelry deliveries, of course I think prisoners should have free access to media. I wonder how the volunteer project Inside Books is able to fulfill prisoner requests for books; perhaps they have a special exemption.
Another question asked about the accomodations given to prisoners for visitation. One of the options was “Notice to family prior to visitation of potential unavailability of prisoner (e.g.: prisoner is in administrative segregation).” Good lord, the correctional adminstrators don’t inform family member’s their loved ones are in lockup, punishing them by driving out to the pen for no reason? I don’t expect correctional workers to be very cool, but that’s just indecent.
Anyway, the survey is active until June 1, 2006, and I’d encourage any readers interested in Texas justice to take it.
If I’m not mistaken, the rule about books and magazines and whatnot is actually written to include sourcing from bookstores along with publishers. Thus, all the materials for the Inside Books project are sent from Monkeywrench Books and are therefore legal. -Erich