HACKENSACK, N.J. _ An acclaimed book about racial bias in the U.S. prison system has been unconstitutionally banned in a pair of New Jersey correctional facilities, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey claimed in a letter to state officials blasting the decision.
The ban on "The New Jim Crow" violates the First Amendment and the Department of Corrections' own regulations at a time when New Jersey is grappling with racial disparities in its jails and prisons and taking steps toward reform, the civil rights group said.
"The DOC _ and every player in the criminal justice system, from police officers and prosecutors to judges and legislators _ must take affirmative steps to reduce our state's shameful racial disparities," the ACLU-NJ wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Gary M. Lanigan, the Department of Corrections commissioner.
"The ban on 'The New Jim Crow' does precisely the opposite and is a step backwards instead," the letter continued. "In its worst light, it looks like an attempt to keep impacted people uninformed about the history of the very injustice that defines their daily lives."
The Department of Corrections declined to comment Monday morning about the banning of the book, a best-seller that provoked national discussions on the justice system.
In "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," the legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that America's war on drugs fueled the mass incarceration of black Americans, including many who were locked up for minor or nonviolent offenses. As a result, Alexander argues, African-Americans have been treated as second-class citizens, disenfranchised and denied the basic rights that they supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.
The ACLU-NJ claims the ban amounts to censorship and that prisons and jails can ban reading materials only on the basis of legitimate concerns, such as security issues.
"The ratios and percentages of mass incarceration play out in terms of human lives," said Amol Sinha, the ACLU-NJ's executive director. "Keeping a book that examines a national tragedy out of the hands of the people mired within it adds insult to injury."
Alexander weighed in on the controversy Monday morning, saying her book had been banned by a number of prisons around the country.
"It seems prison administrators are determined to keep people who are locked up as ignorant as possible about the racial, social, and political forces that have made the United States the most punitive nation on earth," she wrote on Facebook.
Alexander said she hoped that the ACLU's challenge would "shine a light on the many ways in which people in prison are routinely denied basic civil and human rights, including the right to read about matters of justice directly relevant to their own lives."
