Compared to mail, prison staff might be a much more common source of contraband in prisons [1].
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-...
For the sake of comparison, see Brazil’s Bolsonaro finds novel way to reduce 27-year sentence: reading books. [1]
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/16/brazil-jair-bo...
"The Alabama Solution" (nominated for best documentary, 2025) is a mind-blowing documentary about the prison system. Indeed, everything gets through prison guards. In that case, the problem was that inmates were self-educating in law, and figured out that their highest leverage is financial and organized strikes targeting free revenue from almost-unpaid labor.
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
The full title is:
> 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.
> in order to tamp down on contraband being smuggled into prisons.
You can thumb flip through 300 pages in under a second to see that there is nothing in there.
It is bonded to the paper. The paper is soaked in liquid drugs and then left to dry. The books are then shipped to the jails. Once there, the pages are then torn out and eaten or smoked.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bug+pesticide+paper+prison
https://www.goerie.com/story/news/crime/2024/11/27/inmate-ma...
Pretty much a textbook use case for surface drug test kits.
You'd need a test for every random chemical someone can use to get high. This story piqued my interest a few years ago because I didn't realize people got high off bug spray.
I think the best alternative solution is to get better e-books on the tablets the prisons already have, as airstrike said.
Also much easier to extract money that way when the ebook can’t be transferred whereas a book can be traded freely once it’s in the prison system.
A textbook case, you say?
They still have access to the prison library. It's only about receiving direct books and magazines.
> Critics say such restrictions, however, severely limit access for people in prison to reading materials since the offerings in prison libraries and on prison-issued tablets can be limited or outdated.
Sounds like there's a very easy solution to the problem
Yeah. Restoring their rights.
Their rights to an extremely generous and updated tablet based ebook selection. The ROI on that providing that would be very good for governments, you would assume. Recidivism down. Libraries could do other things with the book space.
The great thing about prison tablets is that they are cheap and offer a low-cost selection of reading materials, with no incentive to have some scummy third party company in the loop to profit off their monopoly.
Doesn't matter: the types of people criticizing such a decision happens to also be the type of people who have zero compassion for the victims of crime. "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent" and all that comes to mind.
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.
This is a pretty common restriction.
This restriction appears to go beyond most other state level policies in the US.
> This is the strictest ban on sending reading material to prisons in the country. Advocates worry this will launch similar efforts nationwide. [0]
“Advocates worry”
What are we talking about here? Who are these advocates and why should I listen to their worries over prison personnel?
Treating prisoners humanely and preparing them to resume a productive life after prison helps us all.
Prison personnel are often misaligned when it comes to the wellbeing of their inmates.
Although that doesn't make it good.
I live in Arkansas, and both know people have been in the state prison system and have family that work in it.
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.
It sounds like this prevents books from being sent to prisoners no matter who the sender is.
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.
If you can process drugs and get high in prison then you're not actually in any form of custody. You're just left to your own devices in an unsupervised locked box. It's not hard to figure out why our recidivism rate is so embarrassing.
Anyways, I'm sure this will /completely/ prevent drugs from getting in, so I guess that justifies the destruction of prisoner rights?
[dead]
Maybe the specific solvent liquids are more of the problem there than the books.
Likely water.