Reading can reduce recidivism [2]. Taking inspiration from John F. Kennedy [3], I'd say that those who make prison rehabilitation impossible will make preventable recidivism inevitable.
[1] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/10/18/prison-drugs-o...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_Lives_Through_Literat...
[3] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-first-...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/16/brazil-jair-bo...
You can thumb flip through 300 pages in under a second to see that there is nothing in there.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bug+pesticide+paper+prison
https://www.goerie.com/story/news/crime/2024/11/27/inmate-ma...
I think the best alternative solution is to get better e-books on the tablets the prisons already have, as airstrike said.
> This is the strictest ban on sending reading material to prisons in the country. Advocates worry this will launch similar efforts nationwide. [0]
What are we talking about here? Who are these advocates and why should I listen to their worries over prison personnel?
You can continue to be wrong, or you can do even minimal research and revisit your biases. Choose.
Rehabilitation at all cost / dubious redemption is the subject of the satire movie "A clockwork orange".
HN shall upload and upvotes articles like these, implying inmates are suffering horrible injustice in red states. But same HN shall not upvote any article about a blonde woman ukrainian refugee getting slaughtered in the neck and dying while hearing the last words "take that white girl".
Poor criminal: he now has to go the prison's library to read and cannot receive books and magazines directly.
Such injustice.
Why not let inmates’ families buy books from an approved vendor?
This didn't come out of nowhere. Book and letters have both been used in the past to smuggle in drugs - including soaking the paper in liquids and then extracting them or using them directly inside.
Anyways, I'm sure this will /completely/ prevent drugs from getting in, so I guess that justifies the destruction of prisoner rights?
In California you are not allowed to mail books directly to prisoners, but you can order books from Amazon (or a few other large sellers) for shipment to the prisoner. They figure a shipment directly from those places should be contraband free. Hopefully they have some kind of anti-spoofing scheme.
I think the CA policy is pretty common, so Arkansas must be going further.
So it makes sense, to avoid these "problems" by restricting books, given that the revenue from contraband with drugs and everything else continues to work through prison guards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alabama_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Alabama_Movement
That was THE way for individuals to send a book via mail to an inmate, and starting February 1st that will no longer be an available option [1]:
> Before the new policy, employees of the Department of Corrections inspected and decided, on a case-by-case basis, whether materials could be passed to those on the inside. Materials to incarcerated people were already limited to those sent directly from publishers or approved vendors, with bans on materials sent from individuals and unapproved organizations. Now, materials are allowed into the system only through requested donations to prison libraries and/or prison chaplains.
When I posted TFA, the Arkansas Division of Correction page about "Mail and Money" for inmates [2] had a line about the February 1st ban on mailed books etc. The line did not mention specific sources of mail, so I interpreted it as categorically applying to mailed books etc. from all sources (including bookstores) addressed to individual inmates. I'm kicking myself for not archiving the page when I posted TFA, because just now (a day and some hours later) I checked the page and the line had been deleted [3], except for a sloppily-left-in space right before "No food or care packages may be mailed to an inmate." The now-deleted line seems to have been added after January 12, because a Wayback Machine archive on January 12 says that "All books, magazines, newspapers and catalogs must be mailed directly from the publisher, bookstore, educational institution, or recognized commercial or charitable outlet." [4] (That is, the page previously mentioned specific sources of mail.)
[1] https://bookriot.com/arkansas-prison-book-ban/
[2] https://doc.arkansas.gov/correction/inmates/mail-and-money/
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20260112235838/https://doc.arkan...
Not saying that would not reduce some legitimate book gifts, but adding every way possible for books to reach inmates is a good policy for any prison, the inmate and rehabilitation, regardless of the drug problem.
hn_acker•2w ago
> Arkansas inmates restricted from receiving physical books, other media directly under new policy
The article is from December 2025, and the policy takes effect on February 1, 2026.