‘A de facto book ban:’ Missouri bars people from sending books to loved ones in prison
Family and friends will no longer be able to order books for people incarcerated in Missouri prisons.
Missouri’s policy already requires loved ones to order materials to be sent directly from a “bona fide vendor” approved by the state.
The new, more restrictive policy goes into effect Sept. 25. Instead of ordering reading materials from an approved vendor, friends and family will need to add funds to a prisoner’s account. The person will then be able to order a book through the DOC’s vendor.
Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said the change was made in an effort to stop drugs from entering facilities. She also said prisoners will have regular access to ordering books and that the availability of books would not change.
But incarcerated Missourians and advocates say the department’s action is a punitive measure that doesn’t address how drugs are actually getting in.
A prisoner at Jefferson City Correctional Center, who did not want to be identified out of fears of retaliation, said he has received books from family members over the years he has been incarcerated. Most have been religious in nature.
Reading is a “good pastime,” he said.
People in prisons, he continued, don’t have a lot of privileges, and the state seems to keep chipping away at them.
In July 2022, the department of corrections stopped physical mail. Letters are sent to a facility in Tampa, Florida, where they are scanned and sent electronically.
Lauren Brinkley-Rubenstein, an associate professor at Duke University and expert on health in prison systems, previously told The Star that change was not scientific or evidence-based.
“It’s not stopping drugs coming in the building,” she said. “And it’s severing relationships, which has a very negative impact on people’s health.”
The Kansas City-area organization Liberation Lit has been sending people who are incarcerated in Kansas and Missouri books since early 2021. Last year, prisoners received more than 400 titles they had requested based on their interests.
Co-founder Dylan Pyles said the new policy is Missouri is “a de facto book ban.”
“Really what this does is it puts the burden on the residents themselves to get money from their loved one if they want to pay for a book, which adds to fees for sending money,” he said. “It makes it increasingly harder for people to access books.”
Pyles added that reading materials are a “lifeline” as well as educational tools, and that prohibiting them to be sent for a birthday or other occasions “feels cruel and unusual.”
Antwann Johnson, who is also incarcerated in Jefferson City, said that when things that bring prisoners hope are taken away, they’re more likely to turn to drugs.
He also said the department of corrections wants to blame drugs on “everything but the real situation.”
A prisoner at Chillicothe Correctional Center said, “It’s a bad policy. It’s not how most contraband gets in anyway.”
Many, including groups like Missouri Prison Reform and the MacArthur Justice Center, believe prison staff should be more closely monitored when it comes to drugs getting inside facilities.
The department does not have data on how many books have been found laced with drugs. But, Pojmann said, this summer corrections officers discovered a book with blank pages that were soaked in the drug K2 and a book with 52 suboxone strips in its spine.
“Since last fall, multiple cell searches have uncovered many magazine and book pages that have tested positive for synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine,” she said. “In some cases, they were discovered only after an offender was found unresponsive after ingesting or absorbing the substance.”
Through the first half of this year, 69 people died under the Missouri Department of Corrections’ watch.
Of the known causes of death, 72.3% were classified as natural, 19.1% were accidental, 6.3% were a result of executions and 2.1% were suicides. All of the accidental deaths were from overdoses, Pojmann said in July.
She also said the department is addressing substance abuse issues by expanding treatment options as well as access to Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose.
In Kansas, friends and family are still allowed to purchase a book from a publisher or vendor such as Amazon and have it sent to someone in prison. David Thompson, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections, said there have been “no issues since the vendor must be preapproved.”
