Sharing Books with My Dad in Prison
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Prisoners would write asking for subjects, not by title since that was super unlikely. Often we would mail a mix of magazines and books.
Every jail has different rules. Each package would get custom consideration for which jail it was going to.
Sometimes stuff would just get confiscated for no reason.
Some of the letters were sad to read. The appreciation and expression of thanks for some random book previously sent.
The date it was read by a volunteer and responded to would be sometimes several months from the date it was written.
It did spur my interest in criminal justice system to some extent. But mostly I took away how sad the conditions were on the inside. As I took for granted my ability to choose and read whatever I liked, whenever I liked.
But the real issue is one of control. Treating prisoners as subhuman is a management practice.
Slight correction: Treating prisoners as subhuman is a societal practice. (At least, in the societal context that this discussion and the article are about.)
Shit, half the modern doorstop fantasy genre is out on that concern alone.
Photos too-- if it's too risque or pornographic, it's subject to confiscation.
Considering the lack of conjugal visits, it makes it just that much more difficult to maintain relationships with anyone on the outside.
(Of course, every prison is different, but this was the case in Escondido as recently as a decade ago...)
I did a lot of reading. In fact, once I got a chance to go to the computer lab, I wrote upwards of 100 articles. I wrote articles about introductory AI, health, and science.
A prison is run by the state and is geared towards those with much longer sentences.
Since people go insane with lack of stimulation in solitary, I'd say stimulation is indeed a basic human right.
You can pick anything you want, and say people should have it, but if you want to say there are no excuses for human rights violations then you can't pick anything you want and call it a right.
On the other hand, if you want it to be widely accepted that there are excuses for human rights violations, then it's strongly in your interest to have as many rights as possible. Didn't Saudi Arabia, notorious rights violator, want internet to be declared a right?
The point of jail is to protect society from people who violate other peoples' rights. Jail shouldn't be about punishment, torture, etc.
It's well known that removing stimulation from people causes them to go insane. Hence, such is tantamount from torture. While that isn't specifically about book reading, preventing a person from reading, human contact, etc., is removing stimulation. Removing all stimulation violates human rights.
Access to books would fall under the right to education, but I'm not sure if that's a right recognised under the US constitution and the US is not meaningfully subscribed to any international treaties on human rights.
Access to books would fall under the right to education, but I'm not sure if that's a right recognised under the US constitution and the US is not meaningfully or blindingly subscribed to any international treaties on human rights.
>So while going to prison is "never lucky", he says, he considers himself fortunate to have been signed up for a programme called Storybook Dads.
>This gives prisoners with young children a chance to spend time in a studio recording bedtime stories, which are then sent to their families at home on CD or DVD.