Censorship in carceral settings

We will provide information about free resources and ways that you can get involved, help out, and help yourself and loved ones navigate censorship in the carceral system.

This panel conversation brings together people with different experiences of carceral libraries, creating carceral library policy, teaching, journalism, and incarceration to speak about the long history and pernicious and evolving impacts of censorship in prisons, jails, and detention centers in the US and its territories. Learn about the evolving landscape of censorship, and how current research and practice aims to document it and fight back.

Jeanie Austin (they/them)

Jeanie Austin earned their PhD in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are a jail and reentry services librarian at the San Francisco Public Library and has provided library services in juvenile detention centers and jails for over a decade. In addition to authoring numerous journal articles, their book, "Library Services and Incarceration: Recognizing Barriers, Strengthening Access" was published by the American Library Association in 2021. 

Erin Boyington (she/her)

Erin Boyington has worked as a correctional librarian since 2013. After receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington, she began her library career at the Sterling Correctional Facility Libraries in Sterling, Colorado. In 2016, she joined the Colorado State Library's Institutional Library Development (ILD) unit. ILD provides staff training, develops policy, manages collections, and much more, for adults and youth in over 40 institutional libraries statewide. She has contributed to Intellectual Freedom Stories from a Shifting Landscape (2020) and Exploring the Roles and Practices of Libraries in Prisons: International Perspectives (2021).

Andrew Calderon (he/they)

Andrew is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the United States criminal justice system. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The New School in New York city, where he teaches data, design and community engagement, and additionally works as a Project & Product Designer for the Journalism + Design Lab, an non-profit initiative to develop civic infrastructure through free journalism and design training at community colleges.

Eldon Ray James (he/him) 

While serving a 70-month sentence in federal prison I decided to become a librarian. I made that happen by graduating from the University of Texas at Austin School of Information in 2007 with a Master of Science in Information Studies (MSIS). Amazing serendipity made Dr. Loriene Roy my advisor. She took me to Washington D.C. as a part of her presidential party. She introduced me to the American Library Association and a group called the Prisoners Forum where I found a family with carceral librarians.

One of those librarians, Diane Walden, asked me to help write the Prisoners’ Right to Read: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights and then help move it though ALA. That experience led me to my involvement in the Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC), Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT), and the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) of ALA. I was the 2022 FTRF Roll of Honor winner. I worked on the 4th International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Guidelines for Library Services to Prisoners Working Group, and the ALA Standards for Library Services to the Incarcerated or Detained as a Project Manager and author. 

Victoria Van Hyning (she/her)

I am an Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at the University of Maryland, College of Information Studies at College Park. I arrived at the iSchool in 2020, after working at the Library of Congress on the By the People crowdsourced transcription platform for two years. Before that I lived and worked in the UK and earned degrees in English literature. As an academic and as a practitioner, I strive to create systems and experiences that widen access to information for a diverse range of people, and make space for people to tell their own stories and express their information needs. I served as a Project Manager and author for ALA Standards for Library Services to the Incarcerated or Detained.  My goals were to provide research and writing support for the new Standards, and to learn and shape how those of us teaching Library and Information Science at the graduate and undergraduate levels can prepare our students to serve in carceral libraries, educational programs, and related positions in public and school libraries serving the needs of returning as well as incarcerated or detained individuals.

https://www.jailhouselawyersspeak.com/

April 17 marks Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, established by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 as a day to honor the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli occupation prisons and to support their legitimate right to freedom. The date was chosen because it commemorates the release of prisoner Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi in the first prisoner exchange between the Palestinians and Israel. Accordingly, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day considers all those who have served time in prison as “icons of resistance,” thereby representing all Palestinians who have been under brutal occupation for the past 76 years.

In an interview with the New Arab, Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s coordinator, confirmed that “Palestinians deeply value and honour the tremendous sacrifices that political prisoners have made for the liberation of their land. Each of their lives is precious to them.” She added that Palestinian prisoners are leaders of the resistance who have been detained because Israel understands that they are a threat to the settler colonial system and therefore wants to isolate them away from the world.

“From the earliest days of the Palestinian national liberation movement, imprisonment has always been a weapon used by the colonizer,” Kates confirmed, “and it has always been an inspiration for Palestinian resistance.” More than just the colonizer’s victims, she explained that prisoners are also “leaders, organizers and fighters. They organize behind bars and turn prisons into ‘revolutionary schools’ of the oppressed.” Because they are “central to the liberation movement,” their right to freedom must be part of the liberation struggle along with the isolation of Israel.

Fan audiobook of Angela Y. Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete?