ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — More than 20,000 titles have been banned in the Florida prison system, according to the nonprofit news organization The Marshall Project.
The project says its reporters have asked every state for its book policies and lists of banned publications and currently has data from 18 states, with Florida leading with the most.
The reason behind many banned titles could be over content relating to sex, nudity, violence, or fighting, but not every state provides justifications for its bans, according to The Marshall Project reporter Keri Blakinger, who helped create the archive.
Blakinger, a former inmate, details her first-hand experience with censorship while in jail and later after being released, writing a book and having it banned in Florida.
"Earlier this year, Florida banned my own book — a memoir about why I went to prison and how I cleaned up my life afterward — after the state deemed it 'dangerously inflammatory' and a 'threat to the security, order or rehabilitative objectives of the correctional system,'" Blakinger said.
NPR's WUWF 88.1 reported that Florida’s prison system has also banned hundreds of titles about the experience of incarceration — including "Handbook on Surviving Solitary Confinement: A Survival Guide for the Targeted Prisoner" and "Still We Rise A Resource Packet for Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People in Prison."
The news station noted that Florida has twice as many blacklisted books than Texas, which has around 10,000 titles banned. Both states alone account for about half of the banned titles.
According to The Marshall Project, Florida’s prison system is one of the few to ban "Mein Kampf," the manifesto of Adolf Hitler. The 1976 extremist text about exterminating people who aren’t white, "The Turner Diaries," is also banned — as are books about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
The United States Department of Justice says censorship is not supported by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution nor by the ALA Bill of Rights in Libraries, however, says "prison libraries are under very different conditions."
"It is important to keep in mind that prison librarians are part of the organization that locks up the prisoners. They are professionals who serve the institution as well as the inmates. Basic beliefs in intellectual freedom, censorship, and public service may all be compromised," the agency says.
