ACLU Says New Jersey Prisons Unconstitutionally Banned a Book About Mass Incarceration

The ACLU of New Jersey says a book about racial discrimination in the prison system is being unconstitutionally banned in two correctional facilities.

BREAKING: New Jersey prisons have now banned "The New Jim Crow."

This is a gross overreach of their power. @ACLUNJ is challenging the ban as not only unconstitutional, but a violation of prison policy. https://t.co/LuQHzIsRaB

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) January 8, 2018

In a letter to the state's Department of Corrections, the group is demanding the agency drop Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness from a list of banned materials at New Jersey State Prison and Southern State Correctional Facility. 

ACLU attorney Tess Borden said the ban not only violates the First Amendment, but is especially egregious in the state with the worst black-to white incarceration rate in the country.

"In the best light, I would say the ban on The New Jim Crow in the state with the worst racial disparity seems like an ostrich approach," Borden said. "You know, burying one's head in the sand."

Borden added that while prisons can ban some material—say, about lock-picking or bomb-making—The New Jim Crow doesn't fall into that category.

"Nothing in its content rises to that level that justifies a ban," Borden said. "In fact, its content really makes it recommended reading."

Alexander, a former ACLU lawyer herself, published The New Jim Crow in 2010. The book compares the racial discrimination seen in the war on drugs to the racist Jim Crow policies of the 19th century.

A spokesman for New Jersey's correction department says he hadn't yet seen the letter and couldn't respond.