At nine “TV facilities,” inmates have traded books for screens — and there’s no going back
From the report by Rebecca McCray, posted 8 Feb 2018:
“Most people didn’t have excess money” for books, (Daniel) McGowan says. “They were fighting their cases or were the primary breadwinners of their family.”
That economic reality was reflected in the recent controversy over a new pilot policy introduced by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision that would severely limit prisoners’ access to books. The rule would have required all prisoners and their family members to send packages only through six approved vendors, which offer limited selection; organizations like Books Through Bars, and any prisoner who couldn’t afford to buy their own books, would be out of luck.
Following an onslaught of pushback from New Yorkers concerned that the policy would effectively ban most books, Governor Andrew Cuomo temporarily halted the directive, earning accolades from advocates and the media alike.
It was a well-timed move for Cuomo, who is attempting to cast a more progressive light on his centrist political record, possibly in preparation for an eventual presidential run. But the praise overlooks something sinister: A bizarre policy similar to the one Cuomo shot down still effectively bans free books, and has done so for years, in some cases decades, for up to 13,000 inmates in at least nine state prisons.
These prisons are called “TV facilities.” At some point in the past, prisoners at each of them were instructed by state correction officials to vote by secret ballot on the option to buy personal TVs for their cells. If the vote passed, the TVs then had to be purchased from the prison commissary or an approved vendor, at a cost of more than $100 apiece.
The TVs come with an additional cost: In exchange for the “right” to buy a TV, prisoners are allowed to receive only two personal packages per year, which cannot contain anything besides food. Any other packages have to be purchased by inmates with their own money, if they have any, from approved vendors. In other words, definitely no free books. And the vote is treated as irreversible, meaning if you get locked up tomorrow, your access to free books could be obstructed by a decades-old decision you had no part in.
At the time of this article’s publication, DOCCS official Patrick Bailey could not confirm when the policy was introduced or in which facility, though a lawsuit filed last year says it dates back to the mid-1980s.
The TV policy is applied haphazardly, making it difficult for family members and organizations to know where they can and can’t send packages. Elmira Correctional Facility, for example, is on the official DOCCS TV facility list, but McGowan has successfully sent books there.
Other prisons, including non-TV facilities, seem to reject and accept books at random, according to public defender Ben Schatz, who runs a separate, newer book program for state prisoners out of the Center for Appellate Litigation in Manhattan. “Half the time if you call these facilities to ask about packages, they say they have no idea, ‘just try and send it,’ ” says Schatz. “There’s no question that the TV facility [policy] is just some bizarre, sui generis thing that somebody made up.”
The goal of both the TV policy and the pilot program rescinded by Cuomo, according to DOCCS spokesperson Thomas Mailey, is to make facilities “safer for inmates and staff,” as he says they face “growing issues with drugs and weapons” entering prisons by mail. Last week, DOCCS announced that the number of incidents involving contraband had more than doubled over the last decade. The union representing correction officers has repeatedly called for stricter measures to prevent contraband from entering prisons, and criticized Cuomo’s choice to halt the pilot book-restriction program last month.
Yet correction officers themselves are often conduits for contraband. As recently as November, a DOCCS correction officer at a prison in the Oneida County town of Marcy was arrested for trying to smuggle in drugs.
Correction officials also argue that access to books is scarcely hindered by these policies, because most prisoners can access both a prison library and an inter-library loan system. But both of those options tend to fall short in practice. The inter-library loan system relies on local libraries, which may also lack a wide selection of books. McGowan says when he used the inter-library loan system while incarcerated, roughly one out of every six book requests would be granted.
“Prisons are in rural areas that skew heavily white and heavily conservative, so the population of books you actually have are really homogenous,” adds McGowan.
