US prisoner forbidden to read Pulitzer-winning history book

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

A prisoner in an Alabama jail has claimed in a lawsuit that his jailers prevented him from reading a Pulitzer prize-winning book about America's racial history, thereby violating his civil rights.

Kilby Correctional Facility inmate Mark Melvin says he was sent Douglas Blackmon's award-winning history book Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II in September 2010, but was told he was not allowed it, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed by the Equal Justice Initiative in the US district court for the middle district of Alabama. The news comes as the US marks Banned Books Week, an annual nationwide celebration of the right to read.

The complaint claims Melvin, serving a life sentence after being charged at 14 with helping his older brother commit two murders, was denied access to the book because of regulations which allow officials to withhold mail if it could be "an attempt to incite violence based on race, religion, sex, creed or nationality". Based on original documents and personal narratives, Slavery By Another Name tells of the tens of thousands of "free" black Americans who were bought and sold as forced labourers decades after the official abolition of slavery.

"(The book) is a Pulitzer prize-winning historical account of racial oppression and racial bias in the Southern United States does not advocate violence or a violent ideology, nor does it attempt to incite violence based on race," writes Equal Justice Initiative director and lawyer Bryan Stevenson in the complaint.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/28/us-prisoner-forbidden-pulitzer-history-book

[NOLALady]

1. For some,

truth is pretty scary..

[lsewpershad]

18. Rricks

affraid of their own shadows.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Wow - Republicon Family Values. As usual.

Go Occult - Try to squash the Ugly Truth about Republicon Family Values throughout history...

[grasswire]

3. I'd like to send that man any book he desires to read.

It would be kind of interesting to have piles of history books arrive at that facility. Someone should donate a library.

[alfredo]

4. It's Alabama, why am I not surprised.

[coalition_unwilling]

5. What's wrong with this picture? "Melvin, serving a life sentence

after being charged at 14 with helping his older brother commit two murders . . ."

And they won't let him read a book?

[Rebubula]

6. Boo-fucking-hoo

He murdered (or helped murder) 2 people.

Get back to me when you do not commit such a crime. Prison is not fair - neither is murdering other people.

[truthisfreedom]

7. Rebublican?

[LanternWaste]

8. The one is not predicated on the other.

"Prison is not fair - neither is murdering other people..."

The one is not predicated on the other.

[Angry Dragon]

9. ...............

:popcorn:

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[uppityperson]

13. He was paroled and sent back after a "technical violation". You are something.

Someone who was imprisoned @ 14, served 18 yrs, got out on parole, sent back for a parole violation (unspecified in what I could find) deserved to have his reading limited? wow.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[djg21]

19. This isn't about desserts or punishment . . .

Unfortunately, its about prison security staff, which always are greatly outnumbered, maintaining order in a correctional facility where there undoubtedly already is a propensity for inmate-on-inmate violence and significant racial tension.

I haven't read the book at issue, so I cannot make a judgment, but the First Amendment, as a matter of well-settled law, does not trump valid penological concerns such as the need to maintain order and discipline within a prison.

[yardwork]

25. or maybe it's just a sadistic asshole set of prison authorities making arbitrary decisions

to torture and humiliate the people under their control.

[atreides1]

15. I like your signature line

Ever thought about actually reading it and applying it to yourself?

Just curious.

[ixion]

16. He was 14 at the time

and sentenced as an adult.

Your lack of compassion and understanding is stupefying in the extreme.

[emcguffie]

17. For you I shall inaugurate my ignore list.

Thanks to my DU colleague over there who reminded me I could do that. Now I just have to figure out how to do that, but I don't imagine it can be too hard. I don't think I'll forget your name.

:-)

[lunatica]

20. Is the word redemption in your vocabulary?

Why do people like you think that being treated like a human being within the setting of life punishment is a crime in itself? Does it not occur to you that time changes things? That showing kindness changes people. That a person at 14 has very little concept of what is right or wrong and that as people age their brain changes.

You're something akin to a monster with your lack of compassion.

[booley]

23. Freedom is counted by how a country treats those it despises.

Yeah I know, it sucks not treating people who do bad things badly.

However I am stuck on the old fashioned belief that we don't treat criminals in a criminal way because we ourselves aren't criminals.

Quaint I know.

Which means I dont' give a flying crap if this guy was Charles manson. He still deserves to read a damn book.

Something I believe Charles manson is allowed to do.

[yardwork]

24. Prisoners still have some constitutional rights in the U.S.

[fascisthunter]

26. and banning a book does what?

[WilliamPitt]

28. (facepalm)

[ThomCat]

29. What?

What would you rather have him do if you don't want him to be able to select and read award winning scholarly books?

Reading and educating yourself is a bad thing now? When did that happen?

And, a life sentence for something that a child did? Why does a child have a life sentence for any crime if we still value the idea that we judge children as children!

Children, after all, are supposed to be judged differently precisely because they don't have the knowledge, judgement and reasoning capacity of adults. They don't have the cognitive ability that adults have because they haven't yet grown into that level of development needed to possess it.

Do we now hate (minority) children so much that we have forgotten that even when a child does great wrongs they may still have the capacity to GROW UP into good adults if they are given positive rehabilitative influences?

[hang a left]

10. I was surprised upon reading the article that Melvin is white.

Tried to find info on his original crime. It must have been pretty gruesome or some type of miscarriage of justice. He was tried as an adult 18 years ago.

[uppityperson]

12. More on him. Paroled in 2008, committed "technical violation" @ a transition house

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/alabama-inmate-sues-to-read-southern-history-book.html?_r=2
The dispute began a year ago. Mr. Melvin was entering his 18th year in the state’s custody, having been charged at 14 with helping his older brother commit two murders. He was well-behaved enough to be granted parole in 2008, but after committing what his lawyer called “a technical violation” at a transition house, he was sent back.

[Solly Mack]

21. k/r

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mucifer]

27. I did prison activism in the '90s. They were not allowing us to send in AIDS educational info

into the women's prison in Chowchilla California until a law suit was started.

[krispos42]

30. Books to ban in prison:

"How to Escape From Prison"

"Expedient Improvised Explosives"

"The Dummies Guide to Lock Picking"







Books not to ban in prison:

"Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II"

"1,001 Solitaire Variants"

"The Joy of Cooking"


:hi: